天上掉下来的钱

Money falling from the sky

想象一下，天上掉下来一大笔钱。你会不会在告诉任何人之前，偷偷把十英镑塞进口袋？很有可能，我们大多数人都会选择把几张钞票藏在裤兜里，而不是通知当局。

Imagine money falling from the sky. Would you slip a tenner into your pocket before you told anyone? Chances are, most of us would trouser a few notes rather than inform the authorities.

希特勒正是料到英国会做出这样的反应，才在二战高峰期计划向英国各地抛撒数百万英镑。希特勒深知货币贬值带来的后果。他亲身经历了魏玛共和国的恶性通货膨胀，明白货币是一种无可比拟的武器。货币能够动摇一个国家的根基，这一点他与意识形态上的敌人弗拉基米尔·列宁不谋而合。列宁曾指出，瓦解一个社会最简单的方法就是“使其货币贬值”。

This was the reaction Hitler was banking on when he planned to drop millions of pounds all over Britain at the height of the Second World War. Hitler understood what happens when money loses value. He lived through the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic and was aware that money is a weapon like no other. Money can destabilize a country, a view he shared with his ideological enemy Vladimir Lenin, who observed that the easiest way to undermine a society is to “debauch its currency.”

据报道，列宁在1919年4月23日伦敦《每日纪事报》发表的采访中表示，他有一个计划，要消灭金钱的力量，以便摧毁1917年十月革命后残存的旧俄罗斯国家：

In an interview with the Daily Chronicle in London published on April 23, 1919, Lenin is reported to have said that he had a plan to annihilate the power of money in order to destroy what remained of the old Russian state following the October Revolution of 1917:

我们的财政部每天都在发行数十万张卢布钞票……其目的就是为了摧毁货币的价值……因此，消灭资本主义精神的最简单方法就是向全国大量发行面值很高且没有任何金融担保的钞票。在俄罗斯，100卢布钞票已经几乎一文不值。很快，即使是最普通的农民也会意识到，它只不过是一张废纸……而资本主义国家赖以生存的货币价值和权力的巨大幻象，也将随之破灭^。

Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury … with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money … The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. Already the hundred-rouble note is almost valueless in Russia. Soon even the simplest peasant will realise that it is only a scrap of paper … and the great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based, will have been destroyed.¹

希特勒和列宁在意识形态上或许截然相反，但他们都深谙金钱的强大力量：破坏金钱体系，就等于破坏社会结构。德国空军向英国空投数百万张假钞的计划是最高机密，只有少数纳粹高层知晓。尽管一些诚实的臣民可能会向当局举报，但希特勒却笃定大多数英国人都会把几张假钞藏在床垫下。他要让那些被拿破仑贬称为“商店之国”的贪婪之民自相残杀。通过让这些假钞在全国流通，通货膨胀将席卷整个经济体系，尤其是在英国大量经济资源都投入战争的情况下。当时只有少量消费品和必需品在交易，因此物价波动剧烈。在这种物资匮乏的情况下，大量涌入的新钞将推高英国物价，引发恐慌。希特勒希望，原本平静顺从的英国人会在那一刻经历一场“剧院火灾”。他们会惊慌失措，随之而来的是混乱会颠覆他们的闪电战精神，损害战争努力。

Hitler and Lenin may have been on opposite sides ideologically but they both understood the phenomenal power of money: undermine money and you undermine the fabric of society. The plan for the Luftwaffe to drop millions of banknotes over Britain was top secret, only known by a few senior Nazis. While some honest subjects of the king might go to the authorities, Hitler worked on the basis that most British folk would stuff a few notes under the mattress. He would enlist the people Napoleon famously dismissed as a money-obsessed “nation of shopkeepers” against themselves. By bringing this counterfeit money into circulation all over the country, inflation would rip through the system, particularly as so much of Britain’s economic resources were directed at the war effort. Only a small amount of consumer goods and essentials were being traded, and therefore prices would be volatile. In such conditions of privation, the cascade of new money would drive British prices skyward, triggering panic. Hitler hoped that the previously quiet and obedient British would experience a fire in the theater moment. They’d freak out and the ensuing chaos would upend their Blitz spirit, compromising the war effort.

1942年7月，希特勒的新武器开始投入生产。这将是世界历史上最伟大的伪造行动。一份电报发往集中营指挥官，征召印刷工、雕刻师、艺术家、着色师、排字工、纸张专家和前银行官员。这项行动还需要数学家和密码破译员来破解英镑的编号序列。一群饱受创伤、骨瘦如柴的绝望男子从第三帝国各地的集中营蹒跚而来，抵达萨克森豪森集中营。这142人的任务是攻破英格兰银行的密码。

In July 1942, Hitler’s new weapon cranked into production. It was to be the greatest forgery the world had ever seen. A telegram was sent to the commandants of concentration camps calling for printers, engravers, artists, colorists, typesetters, paper experts, and former bank officials. The operation also needed mathematicians and code breakers to decipher pound sterling’s numbering sequence. A most desperate cohort of traumatized, emaciated men limped into Sachsenhausen from camps all over the Third Reich. These 142 souls were tasked with breaking the Bank of England.

集中营的伪钞制造者印制了132,610,945英镑的假英镑，相当于今天的约75亿英镑或100亿美元。2^将这些假钞空投到英国需要动用德国轰炸机中队，希特勒在1942年5月制定该计划时确实拥有这些轰炸机，但到1943年假钞准备就绪时，战争形势已经发生了变化。3德国在战场上节节败退，空军的资源在俄罗斯捉襟见肘，战争的重心已无法抽出足够的飞机来执行大规模空投任务^。

The concentration camp forgers printed £132,610,945 of fake sterling notes, equal to about £7.5 billion or $10 billion in today’s money.² Dropping these notes over Britain would require squadrons of German bombers that were available to Hitler when the plan was hatched in May 1942, but by the time the forged notes were ready in 1943, the war situation had changed.³ Germany was losing on the battlefield, the Luftwaffe’s resources were stretched in Russia, and the war effort couldn’t spare the planes to handle the mass airdrop.

与无法掌控英格兰银行的希特勒不同，列宁能够启动苏联官方造币厂，从而实现他所渴望的混乱局面。两人有着相似的目标：正如列宁所说，他们都想粉碎“金钱价值和权力的巨大幻觉”。这两位独裁者，两位洞察人性的恶魔，都深谙人性的弱点、群体动力学以及人们能够堕落到何种地步。

Unlike Hitler, who was not in control of the Bank of England, Lenin was able to activate the official Russian mint to achieve the chaos he desired. Both men had similar aims: they wanted, as Lenin said, to shatter “the great illusion of the value and power of money.” Both dictators, two demonic observers of psychology, understood human frailty, crowd dynamics, and the depths to which people can descend.

金钱的力量可能胜过宗教、意识形态甚至军队。动摇金钱的根基，不仅仅会影响价格体系、通货膨胀和经济——它还会影响人们的……头像。希特勒伪造文件的故事揭示了金钱的力量。

Money can be more powerful than religion, ideology, or armies. Mess with money and you mess with far more than the price system, inflation, and economics—you mess with people’s heads. The story of Hitler’s forgery illuminates the power of money.

经济学家的盲点

Economists’ blind spot

全球关于货币的讨论已被我们这个群体劫持。就像新宗教的祭司一样，我们经济学家自告奋勇地向大众解释货币的奥秘。我的货币经济学家生涯始于爱尔兰中央银行，那里正是凭空变出货币的圣殿。就像天主教神父在圣餐仪式中将圣体变成基督的圣体一样，央行行长们将毫无价值的纸张变成了货币。就奇迹而言，这的确令人印象深刻。我们都相信它，因此它一定是真实的。但它真的存在吗？事实上，货币是抽象的，只有当我们（或者说足够多的人）相信它时，它才具有价值。货币，就像信仰一样，是人类想象的产物。

The global discussion about money has been hijacked by my tribe. Like high priests of a new religion, we economists took it upon ourselves to explain the mysteries of money to the people. My career as a monetary economist began in the Central Bank of Ireland, the very tabernacle where money is magicked up out of thin air. In a similar way to a Catholic priest turning the host into the body of Christ in Holy Communion, central bankers take worthless paper and turn it into money. As miracles go, it’s an impressive one. We all believe in it, and therefore it must be real. But is it real? In fact, money is abstract and is only given value as long as the rest of us (or enough of the rest of us) believe in it. Money, like faith, is a product of the human imagination.

我从中央银行转到了投资银行，在那里，中央银行凭空创造出来的货币被进一步转化为另一种形式的货币——一种我们称之为信贷的、极具诱惑力的承诺。中央银行和商业银行共同掌控着货币世界，控制着货币的总量、分配对象以及价格。这些机构是货币运作机制的关键，能够解释货币如何在经济体系中循环。经济学家可以告诉你，如果货币过多或过少该怎么办。但是，仅仅理解货币的运行机制——即货币如何在经济系统中流动——并不能抓住故事的精彩之处。一个水管工或许知道水是如何在管道中流动的，但他可能无法解释为什么水会流动。金钱是生活必需品。金钱最令人兴奋之处在于它对我们产生的影响：它如何改变我们，它赋予我们做什么，以及它如何激发我们内心深处的欲望——有些是好的，有些是可怕的。尽管多年来我一直是经济学家群体中的一员，但我仍然认为大多数经济学家并不真正了解金钱。

From the central bank I moved to investment banking, where that money magicked up by the central bank is supercharged into another form of money, an incendiary promise that we call credit. Between them, central banks and commercial banks run the world of money, controlling how much money is out there, who gets it, and at what price. These institutions are key to the mechanical story of money and can explain how it is pumped around the economy. Economists can tell you what to do if there is too much of it or too little. But understanding the plumbing—how money flows around the economic system—does not capture the interesting part of the story. A plumber might understand how water flows through the pipes but may not be able to explain why water is essential for life. The most exciting aspect of money is what it does to us: how it changes us, what it enables us to do, and how it brings out our deepest urges—some good, some appalling. Despite being a fully paid-up member of the economist tribe for many years, I’ve concluded that most economists do not really understand money.

经济学家剥夺了金钱的乐趣。金钱是一种极具情感的物质，它可以是越轨的、充满诱惑的、危险的，甚至能改变人的心智。金钱代表权力，代表支配，但它也可以是解放。金钱可以买到独立。金钱激励我们，释放人类的能量，而我们如何利用这些能量则取决于我们自己。有些人希望将金钱的可能性分享出去；有些人则希望将其据为己有。金钱不会强加于人类的道德之上，而是会强化它们。如果一个人认为贪婪是好事，那么他就会按照贪婪的方式对待金钱。如果他相信平等和人权，那么他可能会利用金钱来实现这些目标。关键在于，金钱是我们想象出来的，金钱随着我们的改变而改变，金钱也改变着我们。

Economists take the fun out of money. A highly emotional substance, money can be transgressive, sexy, dangerous, mind-altering. Money is power, it is domination, but it can also be liberation. Money buys independence. Money motivates us and releases human energy, and what we do with the energy once we have it is up to us. Some want to spread the possibilities of money around; others want to hoard it for themselves. Money doesn’t impose on human morals; it amplifies them. If a person believes greed is good, they will behave accordingly with money. If they believe in equality and human rights, they may use money to achieve these objectives. The point is that we imagine money into being, money changes as we change, and money changes us.

今天，无论我们是否愿意，我们的整个世界都围绕着这个奇怪的、人为创造的概念运转，列宁称之为“大幻觉”。金钱诞生于数千年前，如今已成为现代文化的核心——一种通用语言，既能被生活在高科技硅谷的富裕投资者理解，也能被老德里苦苦挣扎的人力车夫理解。相隔千里的人们，即使语言和习俗不相通，也能通过金钱进行交流。金钱是一种力量，它支配着全球人口、商品和思想的流动。我们的努力和才能都由它来衡量；未来亦是如此。正如我们将看到的，金钱最早的特征之一就是用今天的价钱来衡量明天。利率不就是价格吗？时间，可以用金钱来衡量吗？当你申请30年期抵押贷款时，虽然你未必会意识到这一点，但你实际上是在描绘30年后你的生活状况。事实上，你是在用金钱来构想你的未来。

Today, whether we like it or not, our entire world revolves around this strange, invented notion that Lenin described as the “great illusion.” Introduced thousands of years ago, money is at the center of modern culture—a universal language understood by rich investors living in high-tech Silicon Valley and struggling rickshaw drivers in Old Delhi. People living thousands of miles apart, who don’t understand each other’s language or customs, understand money and speak to each other through it. Money is a force that dictates the flow of people, goods, and ideas around the globe. Our efforts and talents are assessed by it; so too is the future. As we will see, one of the earliest characteristics of money was putting today’s price on tomorrow. What is the rate of interest other than the price of time, expressed by money? When you take out a thirty-year mortgage, although you don’t necessarily stop to think about it, you are painting a picture of what your circumstances might be in thirty years’ time. In fact, you are imagining your future through money.

金钱定义了劳动者与雇主、买家与卖家、商人与生产者之间的关系。不仅如此，它还定义了被统治者与统治者、国家与公民之间的关系。金钱带来享乐，为欲望、艺术和创造力标价。它激励我们奋斗、成就、创新和冒险。金钱也激发了人性的阴暗面，滋生贪婪、嫉妒、仇恨、暴力，当然还有殖民主义——殖民主义往往是被巨额经济利益所驱动的。金钱之所以复杂，是因为人性本身就复杂。

Money defines the relationship between worker and employer, buyer and seller, merchant and producer. But not only that: it also defines the bond between the governed and the governor, the state and the citizen. Money unlocks pleasure, puts a price on desire, art, and creativity. It motivates us to strive, achieve, invent, and take risks. Money also brings out humanity’s darker side, invoking greed, envy, hatred, violence, and, of course, colonialism, which was so often driven by the prospect of vast financial gain. Money is complex because humans are complex.

神奇的工具

A magic tool

金钱是人类发明的一种巧妙的技术，它帮助我们应对日益复杂且相互关联的世界。我们通常不会把金钱想象成一种工具或技术。这并不是说我们不考虑金钱；我们确实会考虑，而且可能比我们希望的还要多。我们需要金钱才能生存，正因为这种迫切性，我们很少有余力去以其他方式思考金钱。如果你没有足够的现金，你会担心如何才能赚到更多。如果你有很多钱，你会担心如何才能保住它们。我们大多数人都希望多赚点钱，如果我们能找到一种轻松获得金钱的方法，我们很可能会选择这种方法。金钱可以买到自由：它如此吸引人的根本原​​因在于，拥有金钱意味着……有了金钱，你就能通过更好地掌控自己的生活来改变世界。

Money is an ingenious technology that humans invented to help us negotiate an increasingly complex and interrelated world. Imagining money as a tool or a technology is not how we usually think about it. It’s not that we don’t think about money; we do, and probably more than we’d like to. We need money to live and, because of this urgency, we rarely have the luxury of thinking about money in any other way. If you don’t have enough cash, you worry about how you might get more. If you have loads of it, you worry about making sure you don’t lose it. Most of us would like a bit more money, and if we could figure out an easy way of getting it, we’d probably go for that option. Money buys freedom: the essential promise which makes it so attractive is that, armed with money, you can change your world by gaining more control over your life.

鉴于金钱在我们生活中扮演的核心角色，我们很少会从概念层面去思考它。我们很少停下来问自己一些相对简单的问题，例如：金钱是什么？它从哪里来？它会耗尽吗？我们能创造更多金钱吗？或许，这种对概念性问题的缺乏，恰恰是金钱真正成功的标志。只要金钱在流动，推动着世界运转，我们就乐于接受它的存在，而无需探究它是如何产生的。

Given money’s central role in our lives, we rarely think more conceptually about it. We don’t stop to ask ourselves relatively simple questions such as: What is money? Where does it come from? Can it run out? Can we generate more of it? Maybe this absence of conceptual questioning is a measure of the true success of money. As long as it’s flowing, making the world go around, we are happy for money to exist without going into the details of how it came to be.

过去，当我们试图解释祖先的发展历程时，往往聚焦于某种能源或某种推动他们进步的物质技术——例如，车轮的发明、煤炭的发现或犁的出现。但是，那些通过加强合作来帮助我们组织起来追求共同目标的社会技术又该如何看待呢？语言便是其中之一，人类历经数万年发展，才得以用更复杂、更精确、更协作的方式进行交流。然而，真正推动社会合作发展的，是几千年前农业的出现。人类不再仅仅与家人和远亲交往，而是开始与陌生人一起生活在规模更大的永久聚落中。

In the past, when trying to explain how our ancestors developed, we have often focused on a source of energy or a physical technology that aided their progress—for example, the invention of the wheel, the discovery of coal, or the arrival of the plow. But what about the social technologies that helped organize us in pursuit of common goals by enhancing cooperation? One of these tools was language, which humans had developed over tens of thousands of years to communicate with each other in a more sophisticated, precise, and collaborative fashion. However, it was with the advent of agriculture a few thousand years ago that social cooperation really took off. No longer hanging out with just family and extended kin, humans started to live in much larger permanent settlements alongside strangers.

我们每个人都听过“金钱是万恶之源”这句老话，但金钱也是和平的工具。新兴的定居农业社会不再为了食物和财产而互相残杀，而是学会了用货币进行交易。金钱提供了一种替代战争的方式，而不是战争的理由。既然我们可以以协商的价格与彼此以及不同的部落进行交换，又何必争战呢？

Each of us has heard the mantra that money is the root of all evil, yet money is also an instrument of peace. Rather than kill their neighbors for food and property, the newly sedentary farming societies learned to trade using money. Money provided an alternative to, as opposed to a reason for, war. When we can exchange with each other and with different tribes at negotiated prices, why bother fighting?

贸易促进了更和平的共存。在人类之间，即使是来自不同地区和文化的陌生人之间，也存在着交流。我们不仅交换商品，还进行思想、规范和创新方面的交易和融合。从农业的出现开始，人类就走上了一条发展之路，最终形成了城镇、国家和帝国，并拥有了中央集权的权力结构和社会等级。作为狩猎采集者，我们曾与大自然抗争，但随着人类开始殖民土地，我们创造了可以向国家征税的剩余粮食。我们创造了文字、几何、天文学、数字、数学、哲学、建筑和政治理论——所有这些构成我们称之为文明的工具。人类文明的齿轮随着一项又一项技术进步而运转：动物的驯化；各种植物的栽培和杂交；食物储存方法的改进；以及通过海洋进行货物的运输和流通。货币是一项基础性技术，它常常被忽视，却支撑并推动了人类的繁荣发展。

Trade allowed an element of more peaceful coexistence between peoples, even complete strangers from different regions and cultures. We didn’t just exchange goods, but we traded and adopted ideas, norms, and innovations. From the establishment of agriculture, humanity was set on a course of development that would eventually lead to towns, nations, and empires with centralized power structures and social hierarchies. As hunter-gatherers we had been locked in a battle with Mother Nature, but as humans started to colonize the land, we generated food surpluses that could be taxed by the state. We came up with writing, geometry, astronomy, numbers, mathematics, philosophy, architecture, and political theory—all the utensils we associate with something we call civilization. The cogs of human civilization turned with one technological advance after another: the domestication of animals; the cultivation and cross-cultivation of various plants; improved methods of food storage; the distribution and transport of goods via the sea. Money was one foundational technology, often overlooked, that underpinned and animated human flourishing.

社会越复杂，货币就越根深蒂固。早期采用货币的文明获得了竞争优势，并由此催生了彻底改变现代人类历史的创新。我们将看到，货币是一种颠覆性技术，新的货币形式不断颠覆旧体系，这种持续的货币演化又会引发经济、社会和政治的演变，形成一个良性循环。

The more complex our societies, the more engrained money became. Early civilizations that adopted money acquired a competitive advantage over others, leading to innovations that radically changed the story of modern humanity. We will see that money is a disruptive technology, and that new forms of money continuously upend old systems in an ongoing monetary evolution that triggers economic, social, and political evolution in a feedback loop.

深海植物

Plutophytes

在过去的五千年里，金钱深刻地改变了人类以及我们彼此之间和与世界的关系。地球上的其他地区。可以说，它是智人最重要的技术。我们与货币共同进化：我们塑造了货币，但货币也塑造了我们。人类学家经常将人类称为“火生种”，即受火影响的物种。本书贯穿所有观察的主线是，在过去的五千年里，我们已经变成了——恕我冒昧，这个词是我自创的——^冥生种，也就是说，我们已经适应了货币，也被货币所适应。四十万年来，对人类发展影响最大的技术是火；本书的论点是，在过去五千年里塑造人类的关键技术是货币。我们曾经是火生种，但我们已经逐渐变成了冥生种。本书讲述的是一种好奇的猿类与一种奇妙技术之间的关系。

Over the past 5,000 years, money has profoundly altered humanity and our relationships with each other and with the rest of the planet. It is arguably the defining technology of Homo sapiens. We have coevolved with money: we have shaped money, but money has also shaped us. Anthropologists often refer to humans as a “pyrophyte” species, one that is shaped by fire.⁴ The thread linking the observations in this book is that in the course of the last five millennia we have become—and apologies to the linguistic purists as I made this word up—a plutophyte species, meaning a species that has adapted to and been adapted by money. For 400,000 years, the technology that most influenced human development was fire; the contention of this book is that the crucial technology shaping humanity in the last 5,000 years has been money. We were a pyrophyte species but we have gradually become a plutophyte species.This book is about the relationship between a curious ape and a wondrous technology.

与其他技术不同，货币是短暂的。它存在于我们的头脑中，代表着价值，但其本身却没有价值。货币的运作需要一种抽象的思维飞跃。与直觉相反，货币的价值不在于稀缺，而在于充裕。从这个意义上讲，货币与另一种奇妙的人类技术——语言——颇为相似。货币和语言都是群体现象。如同语言一样，使用货币的人越多，它的价值就越高。正如方言最终融入更广泛、更实用的语言一样，最初为小群体内部交易而设计的各种货币形式，最终也被纳入更大、更实用、更灵活的货币体系，其中最突出的便是如今的美元。

Unlike other technologies, money is ephemeral. It resides in our heads, representing value, but it is intrinsically valueless. For money to work, a leap of mental abstraction is required. Counterintuitively, money is valuable not when it is scarce but when it is abundant. In this sense, money resembles another wondrous human technology: language. Both money and language are crowd phenomena. Like language, the more people who use money, the more valuable it becomes. In the same way as dialects are subsumed into larger, more useful languages, various forms of money, originally conceived to trade within small groups, are subsumed into larger, more useful, and more adaptable forms of money, the most prominent of which is now the United States dollar.

货币的核心属性——代表普世价值，被所有人理解和接受——是当今有组织社会的基础之一。货币已被证明是过去最具诱惑力和最持久的观念之一。五千年来，所有其他组织复杂人类社会的方式——无论是基于土地的封建制度、贵族等级制度，还是共产主义的理想社会——最终都被以金钱为基础的社会所取代。

The central property of money—that of representing universal value, understood and accepted by everyone—is one of the foundation stones of organized societies today. Money has proved to be one of the most seductive and enduring ideas of the past five millennia. Over time, all other ways of organizing complex human societies—whether they be land-based feudal systems, aristocratic hierarchies, or communist nirvanas—have ultimately been replaced by societies that are based around money.

从狩猎采集者到数据收集者

From hunter-gatherer to data gatherer

亲爱的读者，您即将跟随一位经济学家展开一段奇妙的探索之旅。这位经济学家可以说对自身所属群体讲述货币故事的能力抱有几分怀疑。我们将考察众多在货币发展中扮演重要角色的文化，并观察它们各自如何运用货币进行创新。我们将发现，对货币的熟练运用与其他创新突破，例如文字、数学、法律、民主和哲学，不谋而合。这种共同演化引出一个问题：货币是其他发展的原因，还是其他发展促成了货币的演化？究竟是先有鸡还是先有蛋？

You, dear reader, are about to embark on a romp with an economist who, it’s fair to say, has grown a bit skeptical of his own tribe’s ability to tell the story of money. We will look at many of the cultures that played a role in the development of money and observe how each one innovated with it. We will see that proficiency with money coincided with other innovative breakthroughs such as writing, numeracy, law, democracy, and philosophy. This coevolution prompts the question: Was money the reason for other developments or did these other developments lead to the evolution of money? What was the chicken and what was the egg?

我们将从非洲开始，探寻最早的考古证据——计数，这甚至可能是一种原始的记账方式——这并非我们通常与石器时代联系在一起的事物。之后，我们将目光转向公元前3500年左右美索不达米亚城市聚落中的早期货币。我们将看到，希腊文明及其逻辑、民主和哲学理念都建立在商业和货币的基础之上；而伟大的罗马帝国的建立不仅依赖于征服，也依赖于信贷。中世纪早期，欧洲的货币使用量下降，古典文明的其他一些基石也随之衰落。货币流通量的减少阻碍了进步。但11世纪货币的重新出现推动了西欧走向佛罗伦萨式的繁荣。它将引领文艺复兴和后来的宗教改革。我们将考察货币在革命时代的演变，从十六世纪和十七世纪初的荷兰共和国一直到十八世纪的美国革命和法国大革命。欧洲殖民化揭示了货币阴暗的一面，当时金钱利益与人类尊严相互冲突——令人遗憾的是，最终金钱获胜。我们将探讨十九世纪货币、自由主义思想和知识进步之间的联系，从达尔文的进化论到现代主义，直至今日。

We will begin in Africa with the first archaeological evidence of counting, which may even have been rudimentary bookkeeping—not something we tend to associate with the Stone Age. From there, we move to early money in the urban settlements of Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. We will see that Greek civilization, with its notions of logic, democracy, and philosophy, was underpinned by commerce and coinage, and that the great Roman Empire was built not just on conquest but on credit. Money usage declined in Europe during the early Middle Ages, along with some other cornerstones of classical civilization. Having less money in circulation hindered progress. But money’s reemergence in the eleventh century propelled western Europe toward Florentine advancement, ushering in the Renaissance and later the Reformation. We will observe money in the revolutionary age from the Dutch Republic of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through to the eighteenth-century American and French revolutions. Money’s darker side is revealed by European colonization when the interests of money were pitted against human dignity—and, lamentably, money won. We will examine the link between money, liberal thought, and intellectual progress in the nineteenth century, moving from Darwin’s theories through to modernism and up to the present day.

我们将看到，货币应用领域的每一次突破——例如利率的提高、硬币的发行或资产负债表的使用——都催生了进一步的创新，一项发展成为另一项发展的跳板。每一章的故事都经过精心挑选，重点关注我认为有助于解释货币与人类进步之间联系的货币创新，这些创新环环相扣，推动着文明的进程。这本书由一位肤色白皙、近乎粉红的爱尔兰人在都柏林写成。如果换作其他人，在其他地方写成，故事也会有所不同，但同样精彩。我希望您读到我精心挑选的故事时，会和我写作时一样觉得生动有趣。

We will see that each breakthrough in the application of money—such as the rate of interest, the introduction of coins, or the use of balance sheets—led to further innovations, one development acting as a launchpad for another. The stories in each chapter are necessarily selective, focusing on innovations in money that I believe help to explain the link between money and human progress, one following from the other and each nudging forward the story of civilization. This is a book written in Dublin by a white, almost pink, Irishman. If it were written by somebody else, somewhere else, the stories would be different and equally valid. I hope you will find the stories I have chosen as lively and interesting to read as I found them to write.

一路走来，我们将邂逅库希姆——第一个名字以文字形式流传至今的人；色诺芬——世界上第一位经济学家；尼禄和韦斯帕芗两位皇帝；以及耶稣本人。我们将穿梭于但丁、斐波那契、古腾堡和彼得大帝的世界，与乔纳森·斯威夫特、查尔斯·塔列朗和亚历山大·汉密尔顿相聚，之后还会拜访查尔斯·达尔文、罗杰·凯斯门特、詹姆斯·乔伊斯和朱迪·加兰。在与加密货币“约会”之前，我们将结识世界上最伟大的伪造者，并加入这场混乱的……2008 年贝尔斯登倒闭当天，福克斯新闻在纽约的演播室采访了现在掌控全球金融命脉的人们。

Along the way we will meet Kushim, the first person whose name has survived in written form; Xenophon, the world’s first economist; the emperors Nero and Vespasian; and Jesus himself. We will swerve into the worlds of Dante, Fibonacci, Gutenberg, and Peter the Great, and spend time with Jonathan Swift, Charles Talleyrand, and Alexander Hamilton, before dropping in on Charles Darwin, Roger Casement, James Joyce, and Judy Garland. Ahead of a date with cryptocurrency, we get to know the world’s greatest forger, join the chaos of the Fox News studios in New York the day Bear Stearns collapsed in 2008, and meet the people who now control global money.

在希腊神话中，普罗米修斯因将火种赐予人类而受到宙斯的惩罚。火种威力强大，宙斯担心人类会用它来压制众神。希腊人认识到，掌握火种标志着人类与地球其他部分关系的深刻转变。他们认为人类是由土、风、火、水四大元素创造的。这些力量塑造了他们的宇宙。大约五千年前，我们发明了另一种力量，第五种元素：金钱。如果说火是古代世界的普罗米修斯之力，那么金钱就是现代世界的普罗米修斯之力。这种聪明的生物以某种方式塑造了世界，无论好坏，我认为如果没有金钱，这一切都不可能发生。

In Greek mythology, Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving humans fire, a technology so powerful that Zeus feared we would overwhelm the gods with it. The Greeks recognized that mastery of fire marked a profound shift in the relationship between humans and the rest of the planet. They imagined that humans were created from the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. These forces shaped their universe. Around 5,000 years ago we invented another force, a fifth element: money. If fire was the Promethean force of the ancient world, money is the Promethean force of the modern world. The clever ape has shaped the world, for better or worse, in a way that I believe would have been impossible without money.

金钱的故事就是人类本身的故事。

The story of money is the story of humanity itself.

石器时代的区块链？

A Stone Age blockchain?

位于布鲁塞尔的比利时皇家自然科学研究所收藏着伊尚戈骨，其历史可追溯至公元前18000年左右。这块骨头于1950年在刚果河畔被发现，大约一个世纪前，欧洲殖民者首次被这条当时几乎无人知晓的河流所蕴藏的商业潜力所吸引。刚果河贯穿中非，过去是、现在仍然是该地区的生命之源。数千年来，它一直是重要的贸易通道。

In the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels lies the Ishango Bone, which dates back to around 18,000 BCE. It was discovered on the banks of the Congo in 1950, roughly a century after European colonists first became excited about the commercial possibilities opened up by the then largely uncharted river. Running through Central Africa, the Congo River was and still is the life blood of the region. It has acted as a trading superhighway for millennia.

伊尚戈骨是一根狒狒股骨，上面刻有一系列凹槽。考古学家对这件器物的用途莫衷一是，但有人推测，每个凹槽代表某人欠他人的金额，所有凹槽加起来则代表一笔交易或一系列收支记录。骨头上的凹痕可能表明交易已经完成，因此取消，或者表明交易尚未完成。如果伊尚戈骨确实是一件商业记账工具，那么上面的凹槽也代表了已知最早的价值概念，^这是一个高度复杂的概念。价值判断是一种抽象思维的练习，而非简单的数字运算。最主要的原因是，我对某件事物的重视程度以及我愿意为之支付的价格，可能与你对同一件事物的重视程度以及你愿意为之支付的价格完全不同。

The Ishango Bone is a baboon’s femur with a series of notches cut into it. Archaeologists are divided over the artifact’s purpose, but it is speculated that each notch indicates an amount owed by someone to someone else and that together they signify a trade or a set of credits and debits. Indentations in the bone may have been indicators that the trades were paid and therefore canceled or that they were outstanding.¹ If the Ishango Bone was indeed a commercial tallystick, its notches also represent the first known example of value, a highly sophisticated concept. Valuing is an exercise in abstract thinking, not least because what I value and the price I am willing to pay for something might be completely different from what you value and what you would be willing to pay for the same item.

为了克服这个问题，我们的非洲祖先是否发展出了一种原始的贸易形式，并需要用到记账工具呢？既然人类的历史始于非洲，那么货币的故事也起源于非洲也就不足为奇了。尽管存在诸多推测，但我们确知的是，这些非洲人确实在进行计数。伊尚戈骨碑是一种极其早期的记录技术，如果这些祖先进行计数是为了进行贸易，那么很可能人类本身就是基本的货币。奴隶制是货币的原罪。

To get over this, could our African ancestors have developed a rudimentary form of trade for which they needed accounting? As the human story begins in Africa, it should not surprise us if the story of money begins there too. Amid the conjecture, what we do know is that these Africans were counting. The Ishango Bone is an extremely early recording technology, and if these ancestors were counting in order to trade, it was human beings who were likely to have been the base currency. Slavery was money’s original sin.

在人类历史的标准叙述中，人类游荡、定居，然后再继续游荡，直到公元前5000年左右才定居下来，形成小型社群，这些社群后来大多以货币为中心组织起来。但伊尚戈骨理论表明，我们的非洲祖先可能早在很久以前就开始思考货币问题。在伊尚戈骨上刻划凹槽的人们是处于新世界边缘的狩猎采集者。在他们古老的石器时代社会中，最核心的技术是令宙斯都感到恐惧的火。

In the standard account of the history of our species, humans roamed, settled, and roamed again, before settling down around 5000 BCE in small communities that would come to be largely organized around money. But the Ishango Bone theory of early commerce suggests that our African ancestors may have been thinking about money much earlier than that. The people who notched the Ishango Bone were hunter-gatherers on the cusp of a new world. Central to their old Stone Age society was the technology that scared Zeus: fire.

伊芙的厨房

Eve’s kitchen

考古学家、人类学家、生物学家和古代历史学家都强调，我们人类的驯化在很大程度上依赖于火。美国人类学家詹姆斯·C·斯科特更进一步，称我们为适应火的物种，或称“耐火物种”。^我们适应火的过程中，身体发生了变化；火改变了我们的环境；我们狩猎和与之共生的动物也因火而改变。虽然我们仍然过着游牧生活，但随着我们使用火来确保以越来越少的努力获取越来越多的营养物质，我们的狩猎和采集范围变得越来越小^。3

Archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, and ancient historians have emphasized how much of our domestication as a species was dependent on fire. James C. Scott, the American anthropologist, goes further, calling us a fire-adjusted or “pyrophyte” species.² Our bodies changed as we adjusted to fire, our environment was changed by fire, and the animals we hunted and lived with were also altered by fire. Although still nomadic, the range of our hunting and gathering became tighter as we used fire to ensure that more and more nutrients were available with ever less effort.³

人类使用火的历史已超过40万年。火使我们能够根据季节变化在不同的营地定居。我们或许会想象狩猎采集者漫无目的地游荡，随意觅食，对环境几乎没有控制权，完全受制于自然。但更合理的看法是，狩猎采集者拥有某种组织体系——你可以称之为早期经济。这种经济并非指拥有货币、税收等制度的经济，而是指一种社会结构，一种部落成员能够理解的等级制度。

Humans have been using fire for over 400,000 years. Fire allowed us to settle in various camps throughout the seasons. We might have an image of the hunter-gatherer roaming aimlessly, foraging randomly, with little control over their environment, entirely at the whim of nature. It’s more reasonable to think of the hunter-gatherers as having an organizational system—you could call it an early economy. Not an economy with currencies, taxes, and the like, but an economy in the sense of a social structure, with hierarchies that the tribe understood.

在游牧民族的经济体系中，大部分土地都被茂密、几乎无法穿越的森林覆盖。通过改造这片土地，他们可以改善日常生活。这些狩猎采集者观察到，自然发生的野火会清除大片森林，暴露出可供食用动物的藏身之处和巢穴。他们也会注意到，火灾过后，植被迅速发生变化，生长迅速的草取代了茂密的林地^。

In the economy of the nomads, most of the earth was covered in thick, almost impenetrable forest. By rearranging this landscape, they could make daily life easier. Those hunter-gatherers observed that natural wildfires cleared huge swaths of forest, revealing the hiding places and nests of animals they could eat. They’d have noticed how, after the burning, vegetation changed quickly with fast-growing grasses replacing the dense woodland.⁴

火对人类进化的影响怎么强调都不为过。有了火，我们才能烹饪。食物就是能量，而食物种类的增加意味着能量的获取。在火出现之前，人类只能依靠生的动植物为生。火为我们带来了一种更容易消化的食物：烹饪帮我们完成了大部分的咀嚼和消化工作，让我们能够以更少的精力获得更多的热量。烹饪也因此增添了社交属性，围坐在火堆旁用餐维系着部落的凝聚力。我们可以想象我们的祖先围坐在火堆旁，烹饪、咀嚼、聊天、取暖、调情、八卦、仰望星空、想象宇宙、讲述故事。

The evolutionary impact of fire is hard to overstate. Fire meant we could cook. Food is energy, and increasing the variety of food you can eat means more energy. Before fire, humans had subsisted on raw animal and vegetable matter. Fire gave us a diet that was much easier to digest: cooking does much of the chewing and digestion for us, delivering more calories with less effort. Cooking also took on a social dimension as eating around the hearth anchored the tribe. We can visualize our ancestors gathering around the fire, cooking, chewing, chatting, warming themselves, flirting, exchanging gossip, gazing at the stars, imagining the universe, and telling stories.

不难想象，17000年前在如今法国境内的拉斯科洞穴中，那些描绘马、鹿和其他当地野生动物的洞穴壁画的创作者们，围坐在篝火旁共同构思这些图像。火是一种节省时间的工具：它开辟了空间，让我们得以沉浸于绘画、自我表达、想象和艺术等抽象概念之中。

It’s not hard to envision the people who made the cave paintings 17,000 years ago at Lascaux, in modern-day France—which depict horses, deer, and other local wild animals—conceiving the images together around the fireside. Fire was a time-saving technology: it opened up space to involve ourselves in abstract notions such as painting, self-expression, imagination, and art.

人口爆炸

Population explosion

大约公元前12000年至9000年间，农业在肥沃新月地带、中美洲和中国出现。⁵没有证据表明这些民族之间相互学习；每个文明^都必然是在某种更强大的自然力量的驱动下发展出了农业。而这种更强大的自然力量就是全球变暖。

Around 12,000 to 9000 BCE, farming emerged in the Fertile Crescent, Central America, and China.⁵ There is no evidence that these peoples learned from each other; each civilization must have figured out farming in response to some greater elementary force. That greater force was global warming.

冰河时期，地球不仅比现在寒冷得多，冰盖覆盖了我们今天所说的北半球的大部分地区，而且至关重要的是，气候也干燥得多。在爱尔兰，我们常常把寒冷与潮湿联系在一起，但如果真的非常寒冷，蒸发量会大大减少，云量也会减少，降雨量也会减少。冰河时期的世界寒冷干燥，这意味着植物难以生长。在这种气候条件下，耕作根本行不通：依靠任何一块土地来生产所需的能源风险太大了。

During the Ice Age, not only was the planet much colder, with ice sheets covering much of what we call the northern hemisphere today, but, crucially, it was much drier. In Ireland, we often associate the cold with the wet but if it is really cold, there is far less evaporation, fewer clouds, and less rain. Our world in the Ice Age was cold and dry, meaning it was difficult for plants to grow. In this type of climate, farming isn’t an option: it’s too risky to depend on any one piece of land to produce the energy you need.

随着气温升高，冰盖融化，生命力突然蓬勃生长。世界变得更加温暖湿润，人们开始在适宜粮食集约化生长的地方定居。这并非一朝一夕之功；或许历经数千年，狩猎采集者们一边采集和狩猎，一边兼顾一些农业活动。兼职耕作很可能持续了数千年，直到我们掌握了更精湛的耕作技术。记住，这就是游戏的真谛。农业就是能量。我们能从农业中获取多少能量？我们能以多高的集约化程度来利用这些能量？我们又能使这种能量来源变得多稳定？一点一点地，谷物就成为了更稳定的能量来源。

As the temperature rose and the ice caps melted, we experienced a sudden profusion of life. The world got warmer and wetter, and people started to live around places where they could make food grow most intensively. This didn’t happen overnight; it probably took thousands of years, with hunter-gatherers foraging and hunting, while doing a little side hustle in farming. Part-time farming was likely the norm for millennia, until we got better at it. Remember, the name of the game is energy. How much energy can we derive from farming, how intensively can we cultivate this energy, and how stable can we make this source of energy? Bit by bit, grains became a more stable source of energy.

生活在小型村落里的人类，以及仍然四处游荡的狩猎采集者，都在寻找既营养丰富又易于种植、收割快、易于储存的作物。谷物恰好满足了他们的需求。谷物易于生长，产量高，耕作迅速，播种后几个月即可收获。进化也对它们格外眷顾：它们可以自花授粉。谷物的这些特性对于说服游牧猎人定居下来至关重要。考虑到全球变暖导致土壤肥力普遍提高，农业的出现以及动物驯养以获取便捷蛋白质，我们原本预期人类人口会迅速增长。但事实并非如此。

Humans living in tiny villages, with hunter-gatherers still roaming around, looked for crops that would give nutritional value as well as be simple to grow, quick to harvest, and easy to store. Grains did the trick. Grains grew easily, offered high yields, were cultivated quickly, and could be harvested within months of being sown. Evolution had also been kind to them: they were self-pollinating. These attributes of grain were essential in persuading nomadic hunters to settle down. Given the increased fertility of the warmer planet in general, the emergence of farming, and the domestication of animals for easy protein, we would have expected the human population to have grown rapidly. But this did not happen.

人类定居后的最初几千年，对人类而言是一场流行病的浩劫。当我们开始放弃游牧生活转而从事农业耕作时，诸如流感、麻疹、天花、斑疹伤寒以及各种瘟疫等动物疾病肆虐于早期的农民之中。病原体从新近驯化的动物身上传播到毫无防备的人类身上，而人类的免疫系统从未接触过这些微小的入侵者。在驯化的最初几千年里，大约从公元前10000年到公元前5000年，牛和猪对我们构成的威胁，与我们对它们的威胁一样巨大。

The first few thousand years of settling down were an epidemiological holocaust for humanity. When we began to swap roaming for farming, animal diseases such as flu, measles, smallpox, typhus, and plagues of all sorts ripped through the first farmers. Pathogens jumped from recently domesticated animals to hapless humans, whose immune systems had never encountered these microscopic invaders. In the first few thousand years of domestication, from around 10,000 BCE to around 5000 BCE, the cow and the pig constituted as much of a threat to us as we did to them.

古代人口学家估计，公元前10000年地球人口约为400万。五千年后，人口仅增长到500万，增长速度因毁灭性的流行病而放缓。农民继承的游牧民族的免疫系统对此毫无准备。人类经过数代进化才建立起免疫力。

Demographers of the ancient world put the planet’s human population at around 4 million in 10,000 BCE. Five thousand years later, that population had only increased to 5 million, the growth slowed by devastating pandemics. The nomadic immune system, which the farmer inherited, was unprepared. It took many generations of evolution to build immunity.

大约公元前5000年，进化开始发挥作用——生存密码的传递，使免疫系统能够识别入侵者，并使人群对越来越多的已知病原体产生更强的抵抗力。大约在那时，人类人口似乎开始迅速增长。到耶稣将放债人赶出圣殿时，人口已达到约1亿，短短5000年间增长了20倍。

By around 5000 BCE, evolution was doing its thing—passing on survival codes, allowing the immune system to identify invaders and the population to become more resistant to an increasing number of recognized pathogens. Around then, the human population appears to have taken off. By the time Jesus was kicking the moneylenders out of the temple, the population was roughly 100 million people, a twentyfold increase in only 5,000 years.

应对机制

Coping mechanisms

随着我们定居下来，我们的社群规模越来越大，结构也越来越复杂，但我们的一些狩猎采集特征仍然保留了下来。其中一种特征就是人类学家所说的“社会能力”。英国人类学家罗宾·邓巴（Robin Dunbar）在试图理解为什么不同灵长类动物的大脑大小各不相同时，曾思考灵长类动物的社群规模是否与其大脑大小相关。 ⁶事实证明，大脑大小确实与群体规模相关：新皮层——我们大脑中负责复杂思维和推理的部分——在灵长类动物中会随着它们可能与之共同生活的同伴数量而增大。大脑会进化以应对我们将会拥有的社会交往数量。人类在绝大多数时间里都以小型游牧群体的形式觅食，因此我们的大脑进化是为了应对小型群体。农业和家畜的出现意味着，从进化的角度来看，仅仅几千年的时间，我们就突然生活在规模大得多的社群中。人类的大脑需要工具——或者说技术——来理解这种新的复杂性。

As we settled, our communities became larger and more complicated, yet some of our hunter-gatherer traits stayed with us. One such trait is what anthropologists call “social capacity.” British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, when trying to understand why various primates had differently sized brains, wondered whether the size of the primate’s social group correlated with its brain size.⁶ It turns out brain size does correlate with group size: the neocortex, the part of our brain that deals with complex thinking and reasoning, grows in primates relative to the number of fellow primates they are likely to live with. Brains evolve to handle the number of social contacts we are going to have. Humans, foraging for the vast majority of our existence in small bands of nomads, have brains that evolved to deal with small groups. The arrival of agriculture and domesticity meant that, quite suddenly in evolutionary terms, over only a few thousand years, we were living in much larger communities. The human brain needed tools—or technologies—to make sense of this new complexity.

我们往往从物理技术的角度来思考技术，比如锤子或汽车，但技术也包括社会技术。社会技术帮助人类在大型群体中更高效地工作，其中包括语言、法律和宗教。这些伴随城市化而出现的社会工具共同演化，围绕着由清晰规则约束的共同目标，组织起人类的集体能量。货币也是一种社会技术，是人类为了应对生活方式的这种剧变而发明的一种应对机制。

We tend to think of technology in terms of physical technology, like a hammer or a car, but there are also social technologies. Social technologies help humans work more efficiently in large groups, and include language, law, and religion. These social tools, which emerged with urbanization, coevolved, organizing collective human energy around common goals governed by clear sets of rules. Money is also a social technology, a coping mechanism that humans invented to deal with this abrupt shift in the way we lived.

对于狩猎采集者来说，食物和住所等自然挑战是小群体面临的问题。而驯化带来的问题则是大群体面临的问题，或者我们可以称之为组织方面的挑战。健康、财富、分配、与陌生人相处、与外来者交易，以及如何应对众多人口拥挤的生活——这些都是错综复杂的难题。

For the hunter-gatherers, nature’s challenges of food and shelter were the problems of small groups. The problems of domestication, on the other hand, were the problems of large groups, or what we might call organizational challenges. Health, wealth, distribution, dealing with strangers, trading with outsiders, and coping with many people living cheek by jowl—these are complicated conundrums.

我们曾经以谷物为生，走上了一条如今看来似曾相识的道路。人类文明的兴起并非偶然，它们都位于适宜谷物生长的纬度地区，从新月沃土到中国中部平原，再到中美洲。公元前五千年间，世界人口从五百万增长到一亿，人口增长最为迅猛的地区需要相应的社会技术来应对。正是在这些地区，我们发现了货币的最初证据，以及与其密切相关的文字和有组织的宗教。

Once fueled by grain, we were on a road that begins to look familiar to the modern observer. It isn’t an accident that human civilizations occurred within the latitudes suited to growing cereals, from the Fertile Crescent to the central Chinese plains to Meso-America. As the world’s population expanded from 5 million to 100 million in the last five millennia BCE, those places where populations grew most spectacularly required social technologies to cope. These are the places we see the first evidence of money, along with its close companions: writing and organized religion.

谷物具有许多特性，深刻地改变了人类及其组织形式。它可以种植、收割和储存，从而产生可长期分配的剩余能量。种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。至关重要的是，有了剩余的谷物，社群就可以构建一套基于易于理解的计量单位——谷物数量——的价值体系。特定数量的谷物对应着其他东西，例如一天的劳动成果。一名劳动者，建立了食品价格与其他所有商品价格之间的关系。

Grain had a number of characteristics that changed humans and human organization profoundly. It could be grown, harvested, and then stored, thus generating a surplus of energy that could be doled out over time. We reap what we sow. Crucially, with a grain surplus, the community could construct a system of value based around an easy-to-understand unit of measurement—a quantity of grain. A specific amount of grain corresponded to something else, such as a day’s work for a laborer, establishing a relationship between the price of food and the price of everything else.

早期货币以谷物为基础；谷物赋予货币普遍价值。例如，在苏美尔（今伊拉克中南部），一舍客勒相当于一蒲式耳大麦。 ⁷舍客勒易于计数和交易。粮仓是古代城市最重要的机构之一，它调节谷物供应，从而调节货币供应，这与现代中央银行的作用非常相似。谷物越多，收成越好，流通中的货币就越多。由于基础货币与谷物等商品挂钩并由其赋予内在价值，借贷、资产和债务——资产负债表的雏形——就很容易评估。谷物经济创造了盈余，国家可以对其征税，从而将一部分收入分配给统治者及其官僚。谷物盈余越多，一个社会的农业生产力就越高，社会也就越复杂。一个能够依靠农业产出养活自己的社会会变得更加发达。它可以养活祭司、士兵、商人、文士以及贵族、皇室成员和各种其他随从。

Early money was grain-based; grain gave money a universal value. In Sumer (in present-day south-central Iraq), for instance, one shekel was equivalent to a bushel of barley.⁷ The shekel could be counted and traded easily. The granary, one of the most important institutions in any ancient city, regulated the supply of grain and thereby the supply of money, much like a modern-day central bank. The more grain, the better the harvest, the more money in circulation. With a base money tied to, and given intrinsic value by, a commodity like grain, debits and credits, assets and debts—the rudiments of balance sheets—could easily be assessed. The grain economies created surpluses that could then be taxed by the state, siphoning off a cut for the rulers and their bureaucrats. The greater the grain surplus, the more productive a society’s agriculture, and the more complex the society. A society that can more than feed itself from its agricultural output becomes more sophisticated. It can sustain priests, soldiers, traders, merchants, and scribes as well as the aristocracy, royal family, and various other hangers-on.

以谷物为基础的货币推动人类从一个由火这种自然技术主导的世界，走向一个由人类技术——货币——驱动的世界。普罗米修斯的接力棒正在传递。这不会在一夜之间完成，但前进的方向已经确定。

Grain-based money propelled humankind from a world determined by the natural technology of fire toward one driven by a human technology, money. The Promethean baton was being passed. This would not happen overnight, but the direction of travel was mapped out.

失眠之夜

Sleepless nights

五千多年前，在美索不达米亚——希腊人认为宙斯和普罗米修斯创造人类的地方——一个名叫库希姆的人收到了一批大麦，很可能是为了酿造啤酒。他借了^这批大麦，并约定了具体的还款期限：合同规定库希姆有两年半的时间偿还贷款。按照当时苏美尔时代的标准年利率33.33%，库希姆必须承担这笔债务。^两年半的时间足够他酿造啤酒、出售、赚取收入、支付各项费用、偿还贷款，然后重新开始。但显然，事情可能会出错。我们不难理解库希姆当时的财务焦虑。他能按时酿造出啤酒吗？他能收到货款吗？如果他失败了，罚息会是多少？考虑到在古代，借款人本人或其子女作为抵押品并不罕见，可以说风险很高。

More than 5,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia—the place, according to the Greeks, where Zeus and Prometheus created humans—a man called Kushim took delivery of a batch of barley, most probably to make beer.¹ He borrowed it for a specific time frame: the contract specified that Kushim had two and a half years to pay back the loan. At an annual interest rate of 33.33 percent, which was normal in Sumerian times, Kushim was on the hook.² Two and a half years gave him time to brew the beer, sell it, generate revenue, and settle his costs, pay back his loan, and start again. But obviously things could go wrong. It’s not difficult for us to appreciate Kushim’s financial anxieties. Could he get the beer made in time? Would he be paid? What rate of penal interest might apply if he failed? Given that it wasn’t unusual in ancient times for the borrower himself, or his children, to be collateral, it’s fair to say the stakes were high.

我们可以想象库希姆深夜祈祷丰收的情景。他刚刚借了些大麦。为了偿还贷款，他需要……他想以合理的价格买到更多的大麦。他最不希望看到的就是歉收，因为歉收会推高大麦价格。反之，如果大麦丰收，价格就会下跌，库希姆就能大赚一笔。利率是关键所在，因为正是利率促使贷款人把大麦借给库希姆。同时，利率也是借款人库希姆愿意接受的价格，他会在计算价格、成本和利润时把利率考虑进去。大麦未来价格的波动才是风险因素。

We can picture Kushim, late at night, praying for a bumper harvest. He has just borrowed barley. To pay it back, he needs to get his hands on more barley at a decent price. The last thing he needs is a poor harvest, which would push the price of barley upward. On the other hand, when there’s a bumper crop, the price of barley falls and Kushim is quids in. The rate of interest is the crucial price here, because this is what coaxes the lender to lend Kushim the barley. It is also the price at which Kushim, the borrower, is happy to do business, and he will have factored the rate of interest into his calculation of price, cost, and profit. The fluctuation of the future price of barley is the risk factor.

想象库希姆辗转难眠的夜晚和他面临的经济困境，会让人觉得他就像我们中的一员。他被收取利息的事实也意味着，到那时，金钱已经发展到如此地步——即便它代表着其他的东西——它本身也变得如此有价值，以至于拥有了与任何现实完全脱钩的价格。债务催生了时间价值的概念，而时间价值又催生了金钱价格的概念：利率。

Imagining Kushim’s sleepless nights and his financial troubles makes him feel like one of us. The fact that he was being charged interest also implies that money had, by this time, evolved to such an extent that—even though it was something that stood for something else—it had become so valuable as to have its own price, completely divorced from anything real. With debt came the notion of the value of time, and with this came the concept of the price of money: the rate of interest.

这种如今对我们来说司空见惯的概念，在当时却是金钱的一次变革性应用。

This concept, commonplace to us now, was a transformative application of money.

货币的价格

The price of money

利率使货币本身成为一种商品，可以进行交易、借贷，并拥有自己的价格。利率的发展是一项巨大的飞跃，因为它使我们能够将当前的经济现实与某种设想的未来情景联系起来。如果利率太低，贷款人就不会向未来放贷，对未来的投资商业之旅也就止步不前。但如果利率太高，务实的借款人就不会为自己担保。投资将会下降。没有对未来的投资，就没有创新，也难以取得进步。利率使人们有足够的信心放贷，也有足够的动力用借来的钱进行投资，因此收入在借贷双方之间流动。利率不仅仅是一个价格；它还是一种密码，一个包含着借款人信息、成功几率、地区风险、市场竞争、技术基础设施以及其他诸多变量的微型百科全书。

The rate of interest turned money into a commodity itself, which could be traded, lent, and borrowed with its own price. The development of the rate of interest was an enormous leap forward because it allowed us to connect our present economic reality to some imagined future scenario. If the interest rate is too low, a lender won’t lend to the future, and the commercial journey of investment in tomorrow stops. But if the rate is too high, a realistic borrower won’t back themselves, and investment will fall. Without investment in tomorrow, there’s no innovation and little progress. The rate of interest allowed people sufficient comfort to lend and sufficient incentive to invest with the borrowed money, so income flowed back and forth between borrowers and lenders. The rate of interest isn’t merely a price; it is also a code, a mini-encyclopedia of information about the person we are lending to, the chances of success, the risk in the region, the competition in the market, the technological infrastructure, and a whole host of other variables.

要了解借贷如何改变一个人的世界观，不妨思考一下利率如何影响人们对时间的感知。假设你以每年 10% 的利率借钱给别人，期限五年。这个利率表明，借出的钱是有成本的，它反映了你无法收回本金的风险以及你放弃使用这笔钱的机会成本。贷款期限越长，你无法收回本金的可能性就越高，因为还款日期越远——从定义上讲，未来是不可预知的——而且你也需要等待更长时间才能使用这笔钱。为了让贷款人从中获利，资金必须有价格——借款人需要付出成本，贷款人需要获得收益。这个价格包含了时间的价值。换句话说，一鸟在手胜过二鸟在林。

To see how borrowing and lending changes a person’s worldview, consider what the rate of interest does to people’s perception of time. Imagine you are lending to somebody at an interest rate of 10 percent per year for five years. This rate tells us that the money lent has a cost that reflects the risk of you not being repaid and the opportunity cost of not spending that money yourself. The longer the term of the loan, the higher the chance you won’t be paid back because it is further into the future—which by definition is unknowable—and the longer you will have to wait before spending the money yourself. In order to make this worthwhile for the lender, money has to have a price—a cost to the borrower and income to the lender. This price factors in the value of time. To put it another way, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

利率的改变具有革命性意义：借款人第一次能够利用未来的收入来消费当下。这项创新对于促进收入流动、防止富人囤积资金至关重要，它使资金能够流向像我们主人公库希姆这样真正需要它的人。试想一下，在一个连太阳升起落下这样的自然现象都还在努力理解的社会里，能够领悟时间的价值是多么重要。苏美尔人虽然缺乏对自然界的实际理解，但他们却拥有卓越的抽象思维能力。受制于收成的变幻莫测和自然界的规律，饱受饥饿和疾病的折磨，苏美尔人却能高度抽象地思考时间的价值，在这样的环境中，风险、回报和概率等概念是他们日常生活中不可或缺的一部分。在金钱方面，我们的祖先出人意料地具有现代性。例如，苏美尔人不仅使用单利，还使用复利，这意味着债务会随着时间的推移呈指数级增长。3^难怪库希姆会感到担忧。

The rate of interest was revolutionary: for the first time, a borrower could use income from the future in order to spend in the present. This innovation was essential to getting income flowing and preventing money from being hoarded by those who had it, making it available to those who wanted it, like our hero Kushim. Imagine being able to get your head around the value of time, in a society still coming to terms with understanding natural phenomena like why the sun rises and sets. What the Sumerians lacked in practical understanding of the natural world they made up for with their comprehension and use of abstract thinking. Hostage to the vagaries of harvest and the rhythm of the natural world, plagued by hunger and disease, Sumerians involved themselves in a high level of mental abstraction about the value of time in an environment where concepts such as risk, reward, and probability were everyday concerns. In terms of money, our ancestors were surprisingly modern. For example, Sumerians deployed not just simple interest but compound interest, whereby the amount of money owed grows exponentially over time.³ Is it any wonder Kushim was worried?

重量、写作和金钱

Weights, writing, and money

库希姆的酿酒生意本身就足够有趣了。但库希姆还有另一个特别之处：他是人类历史上第一个有记载的名字。我们所知的第一个名字，也是我们能够推测其生平的第一个人，并非什么权势滔天的国王，也不是与神灵有直接联系的智者。他只是个普通的商贩，我们的朋友库希姆。在一份用楔形文字写成的文献中，库希姆被记载在公元前3400年至3000年间经营着自己的酿酒作坊。这份文献比伟大的苏美尔史诗《吉尔伽美什史诗》早数百年。

Kushim’s barley racket is interesting enough in itself. But Kushim has another distinction: his is the first recorded name in human history. The first person whose name we know and whose life we can speculate about was not some powerful king or a wise man with a direct line to the gods. He was a run-of-the-mill hustler, our friend Kushim. In a document written in cuneiform, which predates the great Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh by many hundreds of years, Kushim is recorded as running his own home-brew outfit at some point between 3400 and 3000 BCE.

这或许不是最浪漫的起源故事，但我们最巧妙的技术之一——写作——的诞生，却源于另一项突破性的技术：金钱。金钱是我们最早书写的主题。而通过书写金钱，我们也开始书写重量。

It might not be the most romantic origin story, but one of our most ingenious technologies, writing, came about because of another groundbreaking technology: money. Money was the first thing we wrote about. And by writing about money, we were also writing about weights.

在经济史的大部分时期，货币都与重量有关。人们彼此交易各种各样的东西——大麦、油、牛、啤酒——而交易金额则以重量来表示。在美索不达米亚，舍客勒早在公元前3000年就已出现，它代表一蒲式耳的谷物。 ⁴根据收成等因素，一舍客勒的谷物数量会有所不同。舍客勒（在古希伯来语中意为“重量”）的价值也随之波动。

For much of economic history, money was all about weights. People traded all sorts of stuff with each other—barley, oil, cattle, beer—and the amount owed was expressed in a weight. In Mesopotamia, the shekel was established as early as 3000 BCE, and it pertained to a bushel of grain.⁴ Depending on conditions such as the harvest, the amount of grain in a shekel varied. The value of the shekel—which means “weigh” in old Hebrew—fluctuated.

黄金、白银和铜的重量以舍客勒为单位，用于在特定时期（例如一个月或一年）结束时结算交易。考古学家得出结论，通常情况下，贵金属本身并不进行交换；而是将大块的金条储存起来，几乎就像财富储备一样。5^债权人和债权人并不交换金条，而是将他们的债务和信用记录刻在石板上，这是伊尚戈骨的演变。这些债务会定期通过资产转移（例如奴隶或谷物）来偿还。美索不达米亚的日常商业活动以价值一舍客勒的大麦为基础，用于结算城内商人之间的小额交易和债务。这意味着舍客勒具有流动性。与房产等非流动性资产不同，它的价值易于释放和转移。

Gold, silver, and copper were weighed and expressed in shekels to settle trades at the end of a certain period of time, say a month or a year. Archaeologists have concluded that typically the precious metals themselves were not exchanged; rather there were large slabs of bullion, which were stored almost like a reserve of wealth.⁵ Instead of exchanging the bullion, people who owed and who were owed amounts notched their debts and credits on a slate, an evolution of the Ishango Bone. These debts would be settled periodically with an asset transfer such as slaves or cereal. Day-to-day Mesopotamian commerce was based on a shekel’s worth of barley, used to clear small trades and debts between merchants within the city. This means that the shekel was liquid. Unlike something that was illiquid, such as property, its value was easy to unlock and transfer.

由于人人都明白交易规则，因此交易极其简单。而且，由于粮仓储存了剩余的大麦，很少出现大麦短缺的情况。如果当地商人与外国人进行交易，他们会接受一块白银作为货物的交换。由于该地区没有银矿，而且也几乎没有采矿的证据，苏美尔文明的贸易城市一定是将剩余的农产品与远在千里之外的外国人进行交易，以换取白银。否则，他们又如何获得白银呢？

It was extremely simple to clear trades because everyone understood the rules, and there was rarely a sudden lack of barley because the granaries stored surplus. If local merchants were dealing with foreigners, they would accept a block of silver in return for goods. As there were no silver mines in the region and there is very little evidence of mining in the area, the trading cities of the Sumerian civilization must have traded their surplus agriculture with foreigners miles away from their homeland in return for silver. How else would they have got their hands on it?

伊什努纳法典，已知最古老的成文法典1945 年，在巴格达的泰勒哈尔马尔地区发现了一部法律文献，据信其年代可追溯至公元前 18 世纪左右。6^这些法律文献描述了以白银舍客勒表示的价值：

The Ishnuna Code of Law, the oldest-known written body of law, thought to be from around the eighteenth century BCE, was found in Baghdad in the area of Tell Harmal in 1945.⁶ These laws describe values expressed as shekels of silver:

一古尔大麦的价格是一舍客勒银子。

The price of one gur of barley is one shekel of silver.

3 公担纯油的价格是 1 谢克尔银子。

The price of 3 qas of pure oil is one shekel of silver.

一苏特和五夸斯芝麻油的价格是一舍客勒银子。

The price of one sut and 5 qas of sesame oil is one shekel of silver.

6 苏特羊毛的价格是 1 舍客勒银子。

The price of 6 suts of wool is one shekel of silver.

2古尔盐的价格是1舍客勒银子。

The price of 2 gurs of salt is one shekel of silver.

一哈尔种子的价格是一舍客勒银子^。7

The price of one hal seed is one shekel of silver.⁷

在早期文明中，砝码受到国家的严格控制，占据着极其重要的地位。砝码的神圣性被视为古代经济高效运转的根本。正如《旧约》所言：“虚假的秤为耶和华所憎恶；公平的砝码为他所喜悦。” ⁸一些看似随意的举动——例如，从古代到欧元采用之前，希腊的货币都是德拉克马，意为“一把”——实际上却意义重大。德拉克马的起源，如同舍客勒一样，凸显了古代度量衡与货币之间密不可分的联系。

Tightly controlled by the state, weights were a significant priority in early civilizations. The sanctity of weights was regarded as paramount to the efficient operation of the ancient economy. As the Old Testament states, “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord; a just weight is his delight.”⁸ What might sound casual—for example, the Greek currency from ancient times up to the adoption of the euro was the drachma, meaning a “handful”—was in fact to be taken seriously. The drachma’s origin, like the shekel’s, underscores the clear link between weights and money that flowed through antiquity.

文明史有时会陷入宏大的戏剧性事件中。战争、英雄和神话占据了主导地位。但还有另一个故事。一个关于平凡琐碎、日常的故事——枯燥乏味、官僚主义盛行、日复一日的现实，讲述了地方的运作方式。在日常运转中，国家需要协调。而协调需要清单。人口清单、土地清单、所有权清单、生产力清单、牲畜清单、产量清单、粮食储备清单。中央集权国家依靠税收运作，而税收只有在税务官知道该向谁征税、在哪里找到他们以及该征收多少税款时才能有效运作。他需要收据，交付时间、数量和对比。一个没有统计数据的国家不能称之为国家。因此，这份清单是集中统治的基础工具。

The history of civilization sometimes gets bogged down in the big dramas. The battles, heroes, and myths dominate. But there’s another story. The story of the humdrum, the everyday—the dull, bureaucratic, repetitive reality of how places were run. On a day-to-day functioning basis, states demand coordination. And coordination demands lists. Lists of population, land, ownership, productivity, animals, yields, stores of grains. Centralized states function on taxation, and taxation only works if the taxman knows who to tax, where to find them, and how much to demand. He needs receipts, delivery times, volumes, and comparisons. A state without statistics isn’t a state. The list, therefore, is a foundational instrument of centralized rule.

当我们了解到库希姆的故事时，一整套围绕财产权的法律体系已经建立起来。没有财产权的耕作举步维艰，而货币则使财产权得以流动并赋予其价值。苏美尔法律主要与商业相关，这凸显了财产权、法律纠纷和法律职业在社会中的核心地位。楔形文字，这种早期文字的出现，正是为了记录商业活动。

By the time we hear about Kushim, an entire legal system had built up around property rights. Farming without property rights is tricky, and money allows those property rights to be made liquid and be given a value. Sumerian law was largely commercial, underscoring how central property rights, legal disputes, and the legal profession were in society. Cuneiform, early writing, emerged to keep tabs on commerce.

文字、法律和货币的出现都与城市化和政治复杂性密切相关。在所有这些技术中，货币无疑是最迷人也最有用的，因为它使许多其他事情成为可能。

Writing, laws, and money emerged in response to urbanization and political complexity. Of all these technologies, money was arguably the most beguiling and most useful because it made so many other things possible.

金钱与数字

Money and numbers

在这些古代美索不达米亚城市中，随着商业的增长，人们需要知道谁欠谁多少钱。账簿至关重要。必须有人负责记录，以确保城市能够追踪债务的流转。苏美尔人的贸易越频繁，他们就越需要精通基本的计算；一个不会算数的商人是无法长久生存的。

In these ancient Mesopotamian cities, as commerce increased, people needed to know who owed how much and to whom. Ledgers were essential. Someone had to take notes, to ensure the city could follow the debt carousel. The more Sumerians traded, the more fluent they had to be in basic calculations; a trader who can’t add up won’t last long.

最初，人们用手指计数，这在很大程度上解释了为什么我们的基本数字是五和十。许多古代文明都用手指和脚趾计数，以二十为基础。想想法语中“八十”这个词：quatre-vingts。英语使用者称这个数字为“eighty”（八个十），而法语则称同一个数字为“四个二十”。显然，在凯撒到来之前，法国周边的一些部落肯定使用二十进制，并运用了所有手指和脚趾。他们使用二十进制进行计算。尽管经历了无数次入侵和新文化的交融，法国人仍然在他们的语言中使用二十进制。

Initially, people counted with their fingers, which largely explains the five and ten structure as our base numerals. Many ancient cultures counted using both fingers and toes, with twenty as the foundation. Consider the French word for “eighty”: quatre-vingts. While English speakers call that number “eighty”—eight tens—the French call the same number “four twenties.” Obviously, some tribes knocking around France well before Caesar rocked up must have used base twenty, deploying all of their digits to calculate. Despite countless invasions and new cultures overlaying old ones, the French still use base twenty in their language.

苏美尔人将六十作为他们的基数。这一选择是一项技术创新，因为货币和贸易需要一个能被众多较小数字整除的数字（而六十可以被30、20、15、12、10、6、5、4、3和2整除）。对苏美尔人来说，六十是一个神奇的数字。如今，我们仍然能从古代苏美尔人的思想中看到一丝回响：一分钟有六十秒，一小时有六十分钟。在当时的贸易市场，实用主义比优雅更为重要：如果你在货币化的社会中不掌握基本的计算方法，被骗的风险就会大大增加。货币的出现迫使人们开始用数字思考。

The Sumerians developed the number sixty as their base. This choice was a technological innovation because money and trade demanded a number that was divisible by a huge variety of smaller numbers (and 60 is divisible by 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2). For Sumerians, sixty was a magic number. Today, an echo of the ancient Sumerians is seen in the fact we have sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour. The trading bazaar required pragmatism over elegance: if you didn’t grasp basic calculations in a monetized society, the chances of getting ripped off soared. The introduction of money forced people to think numerically.

随着债务在社会中流通，金融领域也取得了突破性进展。在美索不达米亚，如果我欠你东西，而别人又欠我东西，我可以暂时搁置债务，然后由你（我的债权人）和下一个债务人重新签订合同。早在公元前3000年，就出现了一种类似本票的票据，几乎与20世纪的支票如出一辙。

With debts circulating in society came financial breakthroughs. In Mesopotamia, if I owed something to you and someone else owed me, I could step away and the contract could be restated between you, my creditor, and the next person along, my debtor. As far back as 3000 BCE, a type of promissory note was born, almost like a twentieth-century check.

第一个电子表格

The first spreadsheet

我们往往认为现金流模型是一项新兴技术，而实际上，每年都有银行聘请毕业于顶尖大学的优秀青年，让他们撰写财务报告，评估一家公司的估值是被低估还是高估。他们基于收入和成本的数据驱动型财务预测，构成了贷款决策的依据。虽然MBA课程最早于20世纪20年代面向学生开设，但早在古代，高利率就已经催生了金融创新。在那个时代，人们仍然信仰神灵，为祈求丰收而宰杀牲畜，并通过观察鸡的内脏来预测天气。苏美尔的商人们展现出了令人印象深刻的金融素养。

We tend to assume that cash flow models are a new innovation and in our world, every year, smart young people clutching degrees from the best universities are enrolled by banks to come up with financial reports assessing whether a company is under- or overvalued. Their data-driven financial forecasts, based on revenues and costs, form the basis for loan decisions. The first MBAs were offered to students in the 1920s, but the rate of interest in the ancient world spawned financial innovations at a time when people still believed in the gods, sacrificed animals for the harvest, and examined the innards of chickens to forecast the weather. The traders of Sumer possessed a degree of financial sophistication that is hugely impressive.

考古学家在美索不达米亚城市德雷赫姆发现了一块刻有铭文的泥板，其年代可追溯至公元前2100年左右，这块泥板堪称世界上第一张电子表格^。9泥板上的行列清晰地展现了早期金融软件的惊人范例。它包含了对一项畜牧业投资的预测和估算。与今天的投资模型类似，它包含了关于牲畜出生和死亡的假设，并结合了对繁殖力、饲料和其他投入的预测，从而在当时的利率下构建出该业务的具体损益模型。10^这项技术允许投资者输入各种情景、比率和公式，最终得出模型的最终结果。

Uncovering what could be described as the world’s first-ever spreadsheet, archaeologists found an inscribed tablet from the Mesopotamian city of Drehem dating from around 2100 BCE.⁹ The rows and columns reveal a stunning early example of financial software. The tablet contains projections and forecasts about an investment in a livestock business. Like today’s investment models, it contains assumptions about births and deaths of animals, allied to projections about fertility, foodstuffs, and other inputs, leading to a specific profit and loss model for the business at the prevailing rate of interest.¹⁰ This technology allowed investors to plug in various scenarios, with ratios and formulae, delivering a number at the far side of the model.

德雷赫姆泥板是一份多年期的养牛业“模型”，其增长预测基于母牛的产奶量。从财务规划和电子表格分析的角度来看，它与如今初创公司为筹集资金而使用的商业计划书颇为相似。这份古老的楔形文字模型基于动物死亡率等因素，设定了多种高增长和低增长情景。即使它并非严格意义上的“每股收益”模型，也相差无几。这份电子表格表明，早在耶稣诞生两千多年前，苏美尔人就已开始思考金融、利息、货币和商业，并以此来评估企业未来的价值，预测可能获得的收益和利润，以及这些收益和利润如何影响企业的最终收益和整体价值。

The Drehem tablet is a multi-year “model” for a cattle-rearing business, with growth projections based on the cows’ milk yields. In terms of financial planning and spreadsheet analytics, it is not a million miles from the sort of business plan that start-up companies trying to raise capital today might use. This ancient cuneiform model has various high growth and low growth scenarios based on things like animal mortality. If not quite an “earnings per share” model, it’s not far off. The implication of this spreadsheet is that more than 2,000 years before Jesus, the Sumerians were thinking about finance, interest, money, and commerce in a way that could value businesses into the future, assessing what sort of yields and profits might be made, and how these yields and profits impacted not just the bottom line but the overall value of the business.

苏美尔文明发明了文字和会计制度。一套错综复杂的法律体系和一套精密的金融架构，都以利率为核心。利率的核心在于赋予时间价值。这种令人叹为观止的抽象思维催生了资本市场，由借贷双方共同融资。利率使白银等原本惰性的物质焕发了生机。在苏美尔人的统治下，货币被赋予了生命，释放出人类的能量，库希姆的冒险精神便是最好的例证。有了利息，货币便变得充满活力：作为货币的白银比作为珠宝的白银更有价值，因为借出后可以赚取利息，而利息就是收入。在苏美尔人眼中，货币本身就能创造更多价值。

Sumerian civilization came up with writing, accountancy, an intricate legal system, and a sophisticated financial architecture, all anchored by the rate of interest. At its core, the rate of interest put a value on time. This was a breathtaking level of abstract thinking leading to a market for capital, financed by borrowers and lenders. The rate of interest took something inert, like silver, and animated it. Under the Sumerians, money came alive, releasing human energy, best encapsulated by Kushim’s risk-taking. With interest, money becomes dynamic: silver as money is worth more than silver as jewelry because, when lent out, it can earn interest, and interest is income. With the Sumerians, money was actually making more money.

尽管苏美尔人及其后继者巴比伦人文明高度发达，但他们已经建立了基于契约的商业和组织体系。金钱的概念当时还存在于人们的头脑中，但很快就会进入我们的口袋。一旦金钱进入我们的口袋，商业就会蓬勃发展，而推动这一发展的，是一项意义非凡的货币创新：硬币。

Sophisticated as they were, the Sumerians—and their successors in the region, the Babylonians—had created commercial and organizational systems based on contracts. Money was still in people’s heads, but soon it would be in our pockets, and once money got into our pockets, commerce would explode, powered by a formidable monetary innovation: coins.

迈达斯是被陷害的吗？

Was Midas framed?

弥达斯是弗里吉亚王国的一位贫穷却异常慷慨的国王，弗里吉亚是一片干旱的土地，帕克托罗斯河从中流过。弥达斯乐于收留陌生人，尽管自身境况拮据，他仍然敞开大门迎接来访者。一位名叫西勒诺斯的陌生人来到他的餐桌旁，他是狄俄尼索斯的养父，狄俄尼索斯是欢乐时光、夜生活和放荡不羁之神。弥达斯一如既往地热情款待这位陌生人，将自己仅有的微薄食物都给了他。西勒诺斯本人也酷爱酒，他被弥达斯的慷慨所感动，便将这位贫穷却乐善好施的国王的故事告诉了狄俄尼索斯。为了感谢弥达斯无条件的款待，狄俄尼索斯答应了他一个愿望^。

Midas was a poor but unusually generous king of a parched land called Phrygia, through which flowed the Pactolus River. A great man for taking in strangers, Midas, despite his straitened circumstances, opened his door to visitors. One stranger who ended up at his table was Silenus, the foster father of Dionysus, the god of good times, late nights, and general debauchery. As was his way, Midas laid out the red carpet for the stranger, offering him all that he had from his meager supplies. Impressed by this spontaneous generosity, Silenus, himself fond of a jar, recounted to Dionysus the story of this poor yet charitable king. In recognition of his no-questions-asked hospitality, Dionysus granted Midas one wish.¹

古代的迈达斯患有一种现代人的通病：地位焦虑。他拥有国王的头衔，却身无分文。他自诩为王，却囊中羞涩，这种反差让他觉得自己成了人们嘲笑和怜悯的对象。金钱可以改变这一切。迈达斯祈求凡是他触碰过的东西都能变成黄金。如今，“迈达斯”这个名字几乎成了点石成金的代名词。短视、贪婪和吝啬，但仔细想想，迈达斯不过是个时运不济、心地善良的人，需要喘口气而已。不幸的是，他并没有深思熟虑地进行这次经济实验。他碰了一下苹果，苹果就变成了金子，变得珍贵却毫无用处，华而不实却徒劳无功。他心爱的女儿跑过来拥抱她善良的父亲，结果也变成了金子。意识到自己的愚蠢之后，悲痛欲绝的迈达斯恳求狄俄尼索斯解除他的诅咒。

Ancient Midas suffered from a modern affliction: status anxiety. He held the title of king but he had no money. The contrast between his royal notions and his diminished coffers meant he saw himself as a source of ridicule and pity. Money could change this. Midas asked that everything he touched might be turned to gold. These days the name Midas is synonymous with shortsightedness, greed, and avarice, but, on reflection, Midas was just a down-on-his-luck, decent skin who needed a break. Unfortunately, he had not thought through his economic experiment. He touched an apple; it turned to gold, rendering it valuable but useless, ornamental yet impractical. His beloved daughter ran up to hug her kind father and she too turned to gold. Realizing his folly, the distraught Midas beseeched Dionysus to free him from this curse.

性情温和、宽容的酒神狄俄尼索斯怜悯迈达斯，想起他早年的谦逊和慷慨，便让他到附近的帕克托罗斯河沐浴。（这条河早已干涸，但据信此事发生在安纳托利亚中部，靠近特摩罗斯山。^）传说中，欣喜若狂的迈达斯沐浴时，身上的黄金纷纷褪去，河水也随之变成闪闪发光的淡黄色，流淌着珍贵的金属，使迈达斯得以致富，而无需承受触碰之物皆成金的痛苦。迈达斯土地的继承者吕底亚人，也因此获得了丰富的黄金，传说这都归功于狄俄尼索斯的慷慨。

A jovial god of forgiving disposition, Dionysus took pity on Midas, remembering his earlier humility and generosity, and told him to bathe in the nearby Pactolus. (The river has long since dried up, but it’s believed that this took place in central Anatolia, close to Mount Tmolus.²) According to legend, as an overjoyed Midas bathed, ridding himself of gold, the river turned a glittering, yellowish color, flowing with precious metal, thereby allowing Midas to become wealthy without the inconvenience of everything he touched turning to gold. The successors to Midas’s land, the Lydians, were blessed with a gold supply that the legend put down to the munificence of Dionysus.

希腊人试图通过这个神话来解释一个帝国的崛起，这个帝国以金币为货币，并建立了一个从波斯到爱琴海的庞大贸易网络。帕克托罗斯河确实像黄金一样闪耀，但这并非因为迈达斯国王曾在河中沐浴。帕克托罗斯河中流淌着一种名为琥珀金的合金，也就是人们常说的白金。（“电”这个词源于古希腊语“ elector ”，意为闪耀者。^）巴比伦人主要将黄金视为装饰品。但吕底亚人开创了先河。他们冶炼黄金，并建立了一个基于货币的全新经济体系。^苏美尔人的虚拟货币体系，以契约、法律、债务和……为基础。浮动利率即将转变为实物货币，以金、银、铜币的形式呈现。与稀缺贱金属挂钩的金属币将逐渐改变我们对货币的认知。正是在这一刻，黄金从装饰品转变为货币，催生了一种被广泛接受的货币体系：一块在铸造前毫无价值的金属，在铸造后却焕发出了远超其本身的价值。

The story the Greeks were trying to explain with this myth was how an empire had risen that had used gold coins as currency and created a vast trading network from Persia to the Aegean. The Pactolus River really did shine like gold but not because King Midas bathed in it. The Pactolus carried an alloy called electrum, known as white gold. (The word “electric” stems from the ancient Greek elector, meaning he who shines.³) Gold was mostly valued by Babylonians as ornamentation. But the Lydians did something new. They smelted gold and created a brand-new economic system based on coins.⁴ The virtual money of the Sumerians, underpinned by contracts, laws, debts, and a variable rate of interest, was about to transform into physical money, in the guise of gold, silver, and copper coins. Metallic coins, linked to a scarce base metal, would gradually alter our perception of money. This was the moment when gold transmuted from ornamentation to money, leading to a widely accepted system of money in which a piece of metal, useless before it was minted, would be transformed into something so much more.

货币是一种高度抽象的概念。接受货币意味着人们接受一种新的信仰，即代币“代表”价值。在人类思维的殿堂里，硬币扮演着捷径的角色，它用一小块便于携带且易于理解的金属来表示种类繁多的真实商品和体验的价值。这块金属一旦被制成硬币并盖上印章，其价值就超过了金属本身的固有价值。这种抽象概念使人们能够在比硬币发明之前复杂得多的世界中生存和运作。

Coinage is quite the abstraction. Accepting coinage requires humans to accept a new faith where tokens “represent” value. In the tabernacle of the human mind, the coin works as a short-cut, denoting the value of an immense array of real commodities and experiences in one universally understood tiny bit of portable metal. That piece of metal, once turned into a coin and validated by a stamp, acquires a value more than the intrinsic value of the metal itself. This abstraction enabled people to operate in a far more complex world than had been possible before the invention of coins.

本章讲述的就是这种转变，也就是象征性的货币。我们将从会计和定期结算债务的时代，过渡到使用硬币进行日常交易的体系。在此期间，社会将从仓库里的粮食发展到口袋里的硬币。随着硬币的出现，商业、货币和交易不再以一次性结算事件为中心，而是融入到日常生活中。

This chapter is about that transformation. It’s about symbolic money. From accountancy and an era of debts settled every so often, we are going to move into a system that uses coins for day-to-day trading. During this time, society progresses from grain in a warehouse to coins in your pocket. With coins, commerce, money, and transactions shift from being centered on one-off clearing events to becoming a part of everyday life.

吕底亚人，一个生活在公元前1000年至公元前600年间，位于今土耳其境内的文明，发明了货币。⁵^这项技术非常实用，货币迅速在地中海东部地区传播开来，并帮助建立了一个相互交织的贸易体系，最终发展成为希腊帝国。

The Lydians, a civilization living in what is now Turkey between 1000 and 600 BCE, invented coins.⁵ It was a technology so useful that coinage spread quickly throughout the eastern Mediterranean, helping to create an interwoven trading system that would become the Greek Empire.

自上而下与自下而上

Top-down versus bottom-up

尽管经济运行方式多种多样，但主要有两种。一种是“自上而下”的模式，即位于顶端的统治者指挥经济运行，并根据一套包罗万象的计划，从始至终控制整个过程。古代经济往往倾向于这种自上而下的模式。在苏美尔等伟大文明中，权力源自于由统治者和武士组成的精英阶层，他们接受德鲁伊或祭司阶层的建议。在社会底层，农民耕作土地，向上缴纳租金和什一税。贸易由少数经过任命和授权的批发商垄断，他们可以被看作是一个商业阶层——就像我们在上一章中提到的美索不达米亚的库什姆一样。

Although we have many variations, there are two main ways of running the economic show. One is “top-down,” where the Big Man at the summit commands the economy to behave in a certain way, and controls the process from start to finish, according to an all-encompassing plan. Ancient economies tended toward the top-down approach. Power in great civilizations, like Sumer, flowed from an elite class of rulers and warriors, advised by a druid or priest caste. At the bottom, the peasants worked the land, paying rents and tithes upward. Trade was mandated to a small number of anointed and licensed wholesalers, best thought of as a commercial caste—like Kushim, who we met in the last chapter, in Mesopotamia.

与之相反，“自下而上”的经济模式是有机的。它是一个不断试错的演化系统，市场基于价格、偏好和稀缺性来组织经济和社会。决定经济运行是否有效的，是价格和利润，而不是计划和权威。人们自愿参与自下而上的经济活动，而不是被迫参与。就组织技术而言，一套被广泛接受的货币和铸币体系使得自下而上的经济成为可能。

In contrast, the “bottom-up” economy is organic. It’s an evolutionary system of trial and error, where the market, based on prices, preferences, and scarcity, organizes the economy and society. Prices and profits, rather than plans and priests, determine whether something is working. People involve themselves in the bottom-up economy willingly, rather than at the point of a sword. In terms of an organizing technology, a widely accepted system of money and coinage makes the bottom-up economy possible.

自上而下的经济体系很可能基于互惠——物物交换和再分配。^互惠，即以商品或劳动力交换其他商品或劳动力，是基于传统和习俗，而非价格。它依赖于信誉。我们可以想象这种模式在小群体中行之有效，但随着群体规模的扩大，这种模式就不那么奏效了。试想一下，要与成千上万的人进行物物交换会是什么样子。金币的引入缓慢地推动吕底亚经济向自下而上的体系转变。货币体系的建立最终赋予了部分人一定的权力和主权，尽管这种权力和主权仍然存在于世袭统治等级制度之中。鉴于一枚硬币在王子手中与一枚硬币在平民手中价值相同，硬币在一定程度上削弱了统治阶级的控制。这种普世价值的理念——无论谁使用，硬币的价值都相同——是一项重要的社会发展。在硬币出现之前，如果你生来贫穷，你死时也依然贫穷。硬币的出现标志着极少数人开始走向社会流动。如果你能获得硬币，你就能获得地位^。

The top-down economic system was most probably based on reciprocity—barter and redistribution.⁶ Reciprocity, exchanging goods or labor for other goods or labor, was based on tradition and customs, not on price. It hinged on reputation. We can imagine this working in small groups, but as groups grow, this doesn’t work so well. Consider trying to barter with thousands of people. The introduction of gold coins nudged the Lydian economy, very slowly, toward a bottom-up system organized around money, ultimately bequeathing some people a modicum of power and sovereignty, albeit within a ruling hereditary hierarchy. Given that a single coin in the hand of a prince has the same value as a single coin in the hand of a commoner, coins went some small way toward loosening the grip of the ruling class. This idea of universal value, where a coin has the same value whoever spends it, is an important social development. Prior to coins, if you were born poor, you died poor. The advent of coinage marked the beginning of a move toward social mobility for a tiny minority. If you could acquire coins, you could acquire status.⁷

吕底亚萌芽的市场经济以比其前身官僚经济更高效、更灵活的方式连接了更多的人，使得这个小帝国能够在贸易、战略和智慧上胜过其规模远大于自己的邻国。从公元前700年左右开始，到公元前560年左右克罗伊斯国王统治时期达到鼎盛，吕底亚帝国蓬勃发展，不断引入并创新货币：标准化货币，建立国家运营的中央铸币厂，并发行小面额货币，将更多的人纳入流通，从而刺激了商业活动。

The embryonic Lydian market economy connected more people more efficiently and in a much less rigid fashion than the bureaucratic economies that preceded it, allowing a small empire to out-trade, out-think, and outwit its much larger neighbors. From around 700 BCE and culminating with the reign of its king Croesus, which began around 560 BCE, the Lydian Empire flourished, introducing and continuing to innovate with coins: standardizing them, creating a centralized mint run by the state, and introducing smaller denominations that brought ever more people into the web, thereby stimulating commerce.

希腊历史学家希罗多德大约在公元前440年代至420年代写道，吕底亚人是“我们所知的最早使用金银币的人，也是最早的零售商”。 ⁸ 希罗多德称他们为“零售商”，意在贬低他们，就像拿破仑贬低英国人是“小贩之国”一样。然而，世界正是由小贩们建立起来的。零售商拥有他们独特的活力——一种货币而非军事的活力。商业赋予了吕底亚人巨大的权力。商业活动如火如荼，他们充满活力的首都萨迪斯，是贸易帝国的中心，其疆域遍及现代土耳其西部的大部分地区。

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing at some time around the 440s to 420s BCE, tells us that these Lydians are “the first people we know of to use gold and silver coins and … the first retail tradesmen.”⁸ By calling them “retail tradesmen,” the haughty Herodotus notes that these were commercial people, and he meant this as a put-down in the same way that Napoleon dismissed the English as a nation of shopkeepers. But the world has been built by shopkeepers. Retailers have their own energy— a monetary rather than a military dynamism. Commerce gifted the Lydians immense power. A hive of commercial activity, their vibrant capital, Sardis, anchored a trading empire that extended throughout much of modern-day western Turkey.

希罗多德描述这些唯利是图、自由自在的工匠，他们的习俗与他所处的文明希腊人并无二致，只是他们不会“让自己的女儿卖淫”。9^商业和货币似乎提升了吕底亚女性的地位，她们可以与男性同行进行贸易。在那个女性几乎总是被视为奴隶的世界里，吕底亚女性有权拒绝丈夫，自主选择伴侣。虽然这么说有些夸张（要知道，这些社会普遍存在奴隶制），但这些早期女性获得轻微解放的迹象，象征着金钱的解放力量。

Herodotus describes these profit-oriented, free-wheeling artisans as having the same customs as his own civilized Greeks, except that they did not “prostitute their female children.”⁹ Commerce and coinage appear to have elevated the status of Lydian women, who could trade alongside their male counterparts. In a world where women were rarely more than chattel, Lydian women had the right to refuse a husband and select their own. Without overstating the case (remember these were societies characterized by mass slavery), these early signs of minor female emancipation emblematize the liberating power of money.

金钱的魔力

Money’s magic

在吕底亚帝国之前，任何王国的货币数量都取决于其赖以生存的农作物和征服。吕底亚人凭借其革命性的货币，打破了自然季节循环与货币之间的联系，创造了独立的金币供应体系。这种货币与谷物等农业能源支柱的割裂，或许引发了吕底亚人的一些哲学思考。例如，货币究竟是什么？货币是否有利弊之分？利润是否合法？货币是否会过剩？吕底亚人是否曾思考过这些问题，我们不得而知，但这些问题至今仍困扰着我们。正如我们将看到的，这些问题也同样困扰着伟大的希腊哲学家——他们继承了吕底亚人的这项伟大创新。

Before the Lydian Empire, the amount of money available in any kingdom was a result of the foundational crops and conquest. With their revolutionary coins, the Lydians broke the link between nature’s seasonal cycles and money, creating an autonomous supply of gold tokens. Breaking the link between money and some agricultural energy-based anchor like grain may have raised some philosophical questions for the Lydians. For example, what actually is money? Can there be useful and wasteful money? Is profit legitimate? Can there be too much money? Whether the Lydians were asking these questions, we just don’t know, but they are questions we still struggle with today, and, as we will see, they definitely plagued the great Greek philosophers, inheritors of this wonderful Lydian innovation.

由于其显而易见的优势，铸币一旦被采用，便在整个东地中海地区迅速普及。更多硬币贸易的繁荣促进了货币流通，货币流通速度——即货币易手的速度——也随之加快。硬币的出现使货币发挥了更大的作用。随着货币的流通，集市欣欣向荣。琳琅满目的商品市场，既有来自国外的，也有本地的，推动了社会经济和组织结构的巨大飞跃。市场是分配社会资源的关键组织机制，它通过价格反映稀缺性，而价格则随着供求关系的涨落而波动。吕底亚人逐渐建立起一个与我们今天所熟悉的经济体系相似的体系。

Once adopted, because of its obvious advantage, coinage proliferated all around the eastern Mediterranean. More coins begot more trade, and more trade meant the circulation and velocity of money—how quickly it changed hands—increased. Coins made money work harder. With all this money flying around, the bazaar flourished. Markets for a huge array of goods, foreign and local, ushered in an enormous leap in the economic and organizational structure of society. The market was the critical organizational mechanism that allocated resources around society, registering scarcity via prices, which moved with the ebb and flow of supply and demand. The Lydians were gradually creating an economic system that was beginning to look like something we would recognize today.

吕底亚人不仅拥有铸造钱币所需的琥珀金，还能通过首都萨迪斯进入丝绸之路，从而获得东西向的贸易机会，将爱琴海和地中海与幼发拉底河、波斯，乃至更远的印度和中国连接起来。 ¹⁰一条南北轴线也通过黑海将他们与欧亚草原连接起来，开辟了更多贸易路线。萨迪斯是古代世界最繁忙的贸易走廊上的一个商业枢纽，吸引着来自世界各地的商人和货物。沿途的酒馆里聚集着说着各种语言的旅行商贩，他们买卖啤酒、谷物、油、酒和陶器等日常用品，以及珍珠、香水、陶瓷、布匹、象牙和大理石等更贵重的商品。钱币是伟大的平等器。它使陌生人不再那么陌生，使人们能够通过一种易于接受的媒介建立大规模的联系。

Not only did the Lydians have electrum to mint their coins, they also had access to the Silk Road through the capital, Sardis, which opened them up to trading opportunities extending east to west, linking the Aegean and the Mediterranean with the Euphrates, Persia, and beyond to India and China.¹⁰ A north–south axis also linked them to the Eurasian Steppe via the Black Sea, opening up further routes of exchange. A commercial buckle in the ancient world’s busiest trading beltway, Sardis sucked in traders and goods from all over the globe. Along the way, taverns hosted traveling salesmen, speaking a multitude of languages, and buying and selling everyday items such as beer, grain, oil, wine, and pottery as well as more valuable goods like pearls, perfumes, ceramics, cloth, ivory, and marble. Coins were the great leveler. They made the stranger less strange, allowing people to make connections at a large scale, through a readily accepted medium.

标准化货币

Standardized money

在吕底亚金币出现之前，贸易既繁琐又缓慢。金币必须通过称重来验证真伪。还有货币兑换商。想想这得花多少时间——用秤、砝码之类的东西来衡量价值。显然，贸易商之间存在着一套复杂的借贷系统。几千年前，苏美尔人引入了利息，为货币定价，也为时间赋予价值。吕底亚人继承了这套系统，但他们更进一步。起初，硬币由国王发行，但不久之后，金匠和商人也开始自行铸造硬币，他们根据重量和纯度来制作自己的硬币。随着来自四面八方的硬币涌入萨迪斯，吕底亚的金匠将它们熔化并重新铸造，导致了多种货币的竞争。不同的货币造成了摩擦，因为贸易商无法立即知道每枚硬币的价值。

Before the introduction of Lydian gold coins, trade was cumbersome and slow. Gold pieces had to be verified by weights and money changers. Imagine how much time this took—the palaver of scales, weights, and the like. Obviously, between traders there was a complicated system of debits and credits. Millennia before, the Sumerians had introduced interest, putting a price on money and a value on time. The Lydians inherited this system, but they went one better. At first, coins were issued by the king, but before long they were also minted by individual goldsmiths and traders who fashioned their own coins based on weights and purity. As coins came into Sardis from far and wide, Lydian goldsmiths melted them down and restamped them, leading to competing currencies. Different currencies caused friction as traders didn’t immediately know what each coin was worth.

如果这套体系能够标准化会怎样？在国王吉格斯（约公元前680-645年）统治时期，吕^底亚人建立了国家垄断的铸币制度。更妙的是，他们在每枚硬币上都印上了国王的印记——狮头。吕底亚人将货币与国家紧密联系在一起，由此构建了一种延续数千年的货币模式。希腊人沿用了这一模式，罗马人也效仿，此后几乎所有国家和帝国都依赖于吕底亚人的这项创新：官方发行的货币。铸币是中央集权的巨大来源，时至今日依然如此。在标准化之前，硬币就像各种语言：有些人能理解它们的含义，而有些人则不能。标准化之后，官方货币成为了商业的官方语言。单一货币的出现减少了摩擦，降低了贸易壁垒，并催生了一个更加一体化的市场，提供了更丰富的选择。

What if this system could be standardized? Under the reign of King Gyges (around 680–645 BCE),¹¹ the Lydians introduced a state monopoly over the issuing of coins. In a further stroke of genius, they put the stamp of the king—a lion’s head—on each coin. By making money and the state synonymous, the Lydians were conceiving a model of money that lasted for millennia. The Greeks took it up. So too the Romans, and almost every other state and empire since has relied on this Lydian innovation: the official, state-issued coin. Coinage was a source of enormous centralized power, as it is to this day. Before standardization, coins were like various languages: some people understood what they meant but others didn’t. With standardization, the official coin became the official language of commerce. With one currency came less friction, fewer barriers to trade, and a far more integrated market, offering a wider variety of choice.

克罗伊斯国王（约公元前560年—约公元前546年）见证了吕底亚王国的扩张，使其从一个东临波斯、西濒爱琴海的小型商业共同体，发展成为一个强大的帝国。第一个帝国并非完全建立在战争和征服之上，而是部分建立在财富和商业之上。 ¹²国家对货币的垄断在新货币经济中催生了两个截然不同的参与者：货币的“发行者”——国家，以及货币的“使用者”——人民。你我都是货币的使用者，而非发行者。你或许渴望成为发行者，相信我，我的孩子们也认为我是，但我们并非如此。我们是使用者。使用者努力储蓄、积累，并且，最关键的是，要做好预算。我们会用完钱。而且这种情况经常发生。我们努力工作赚钱，用时间换取金钱。

King Croesus (c. 560–c. 546 BCE) oversaw the expansion of the Lydian state from a small mercantile community, hemmed in by the Persians to the east and the Aegean to the west, into the first empire based partly on wealth and commerce rather than exclusively on war and conquest.¹² A state monopoly on money created two distinct players in the new monetary economy: there was the “issuer” of money—the state—and the “users” of money—the people. You and I are users of money, not issuers. You might love to be an issuer, and believe me, my children think that I am one, but we are not. We are users. Users try to save, accumulate, and, most critically, budget. We can run out of money. We regularly do. We work to get it, exchanging hours of our time for money.

发行者无需这样做。发行法定货币的权力属于国家。在国家境内，我们有义务使用该国发行的货币。我们不能在欧元区国家使用美元，反之亦然。我们或许可以尝试伪造货币，但最终很可能锒铛入狱。另一方面，国家可以随意发行货币，这是一项巨大的权力，可以说是除宣战权之外，任何国家所拥有的最重要的权力。

The issuer doesn’t need to do this. The power of issuing legal money is vested in the state. Within the borders of the state, we are obliged to use the currency that is issued by that state. We can’t use the dollar in a euro country and vice versa. We might try to counterfeit money but we’ll probably end up in prison. The state, on the other hand, can issue as much as it wants, an enormous power, arguably the most significant any state has beyond the ability to declare war.

吕底亚的黄金巩固了国家，而国家通过将这种贵金属兑换成货币，又提升了黄金的价值。随着时间的推移，吕底亚人意识到，将金币分割成越来越小的金锭，以便与越来越多的人进行越来越多的商品交易，将会非常有用。13^更小的面额——相当于一天的劳动成果或一小部分收成——帮助吕底亚人建立了一种自下而上、自由贸易的市场经济，这种经济在一定程度上是由小型零售商推动的：正是拿破仑和希罗多德等大人物所不屑一顾的那种店主和商人。这种从依赖农业生活到零售商相对独立的商业生活的转变，必然从根本上改变了吕底亚人看待世界的方式。

Lydian gold bolstered the state, and the state, by converting the precious metal into money, bolstered the value of gold. With time, the Lydians recognized that it would be useful to divide their coins into smaller and smaller ingots so that they could trade more and more goods with more and more people.¹³ Smaller denominations—equivalent to a day’s work or a small portion of a harvest—helped the Lydians establish a bottom-up, free-trading, market-based economy, partly driven by smaller retailers: the kinds of shopkeepers and tradesmen pooh-poohed by big men like Napoleon and Herodotus. This shift from the dependency of farming life to the relative commercial independence of the retailer must have radically changed how these people saw the world.

一价定律

The law of one price

除了商业联系，金钱也丰富了吕底亚人的基因库。与以往自上而下的经济模式不同，人们不必总是在部落内部通婚。以货币作为嫁妆使得陌生人能够联姻，与其他部落的成员组建家庭，并促进了更多人之间的交流。金钱渗透到社会的各个领域：宗教接受金钱作为礼物，艺术和文化以金钱衡量价值，争端也用金钱解决。盗窃罪的罪犯不再需要被乱石砸死，只需缴纳罚款即可。

Along with business connections, money also enhanced the Lydian gene pool. Unlike top-down economies of the past, people didn’t always have to marry within the tribe. Coin-based dowries allowed strangers to marry each other, have families with members of other tribes, and bring more people into contact with each other. Money bled into every area of society: religions accepted money as gifts, art and culture were valued with money, and disputes were settled with money. A person found guilty of a theft no longer had to be stoned to death for retribution. They could simply pay a fine.

在一个懂得金钱的社会里，各种日常事物都可以用一个共同的衡量标准来表达。金钱强大的组织力量，经济学家称之为“一价定律”，使复杂的事物变得简单，也让吕底亚人的生活和经济更容易理解。由于万物皆可相互比较，吕底亚人可以在面包、橄榄油、葡萄酒、嫖娼、羊毛长袍和纳税之间做出明智的选择，因为所有这些都可以用货币这一清晰的衡量标准，与一天的劳动所得进行比较。

In a society that understood money, all sorts of day-to-day things could be expressed in terms of one common denominator. The great organizational power of money, which economists call “the law of one price,” rendered the complex simple, making Lydian life and its economy much easier to understand. As everything could be valued against everything else, Lydians could make informed choices between a loaf of bread, a jar of olive oil, a glass of wine, sex with a prostitute, a wool tunic, and paying taxes, because all these could be compared with how much they cost vis-à-vis a day’s work, using the clear arbiter of coinage.

金钱带来的地位，是人生中常见的驱动力之一。但要获得地位，需要一种新的思维方式和一项新的技能。你需要了解金钱。与其讲述神明如何赋予你领导地位的故事，不如学会计算。数字能力促使我们走向理性，因为它揭开了世界的神秘面纱。一个以金钱为媒介的世界，是一次巨大的飞跃，一场个人、社会和思想的革命，催生了一种基于金钱的全新社会组织方式。硬币基本的算术能力标志着一场持续数个世纪的转变的开端，这场转变是从天体崇拜转向理性思维。如果说吕底亚人开启了这一进程，那么他们的邻居——逻辑大师希腊人——则以前所未有的热情拥抱了它。

The promise of status, gifted by money, is one of life’s habitual motivators. But to acquire status required a new way of thinking and a new skill. You needed to understand money. Rather than telling a story about how the gods had empowered you to lead, you needed to be able to count. Numeracy nudges us toward rationality because numbers demystify the world. A world mediated by money constituted a great leap forward, a personal, social, and intellectual revolution that spawned an entirely new way of organizing society, based on money. Coins and basic numeracy mark the very beginnings of a shift that would take centuries, from the celestial to the rational. But if the Lydians kicked off this process, their neighbors the Greeks, masters of logic, took to it with a gusto that had never been seen before.

从 神话 到 逻各斯

From mythos to logos

色诺芬（约公元前430年—约公元前354年）出生于伯罗奔尼撒战争时期，距离雅典12英里，出身于雅典一个地位较低的贵族家庭。第欧根尼曾形容他“为人谦逊，相貌英俊”。¹ 与那些家境^富裕的哲学家不同，色诺芬家的收入主要依靠农业，而非大片土地或奴隶的财富。每月辛勤劳作的生活很可能对他的思想产生了影响。预算管理固然能使人专注，但率领士兵作战的责任同样如此。

Born 12 miles from Athens into a family of minor Athenian aristocrats during the years of the Peloponnesian War, Xenophon (c. 430–c. 354 BCE) was described by Diogenes as “a man of great modesty and as handsome as can be imagined.”¹ Unlike richer philosophers, his family’s income relied on the success of farming rather than the wealth from extensive land or slave ownership. Having to earn his monthly crust was probably influential in his thinking. A budget tends to focus the mind, but so too does the responsibility of leading men in battle.

年轻的色诺芬和其他渴望冒险的希腊人一样，加入了居鲁士二世的军队，成为雇佣兵，帮助他推翻其兄长波斯国王阿尔塔薛西斯二世的统治。然而，居鲁士二世的战败并不顺利，他本人战死沙场，而他的两位雇佣将领——斯巴达人克莱阿库斯和雅典人普罗克塞努斯——也被处决。这使得军队被困在雅典以东数百英里处，群龙无首，在异国他乡的寒冬中苦苦挣扎。一位才华横溢的年轻士兵——色诺芬——被委以重任，统领这支一万人的军队。色诺芬成功带领部下穿越如今的亚美尼亚，抵达黑海沿岸，安全脱险。这个故事记载于色诺芬的《远征记》 （詹姆斯·乔伊斯在《尤利西斯》的开篇章节中引用了该书）。由于其文笔相对简洁明了，且对沿途地形的描述细致入微，《远征记》在之后的几个世纪里一直是古希腊语教学的主要教材。亚历山大大帝也曾以《远征记》为指南，征服波斯。

As a young man, Xenophon, like other Greeks seeking adventure, enrolled as a mercenary in the war effort of Cyrus the Younger, in his quest to dethrone his older brother, the Persian king Artaxerxes II. It didn’t turn out too well for Cyrus, who was killed in battle, while his mercenary military generals, the Spartan Clearchus and the Athenian Proxenus, were executed. This left the army stranded, hundreds of miles east of Athens, leaderless, and facing winter in a foreign land. Entrusted with leadership of the 10,000-strong army, a brilliant young Xenophon managed to lead his men to safety, through what is now Armenia, to the Black Sea coast. This story is documented in Xenophon’s Anabasis (as quoted by James Joyce in the opening chapter of Ulysses). Due to its relatively straightforward prose and meticulous detailing of the terrain encountered, Anabasis was, for many centuries, a primary text in the instruction of ancient Greek. Alexander the Great used Anabasis as a field guide for his own conquest of Persia.

如果说《远征记》展现了色诺芬作为地理学家的一面，那么他另一部同样注重细节的著作《经济学论》则揭示了色诺芬作为经济学家的一面。《经济学论》是史上第一部经济学著作。我们今天所说的“经济学”（economics）一词就源于此，它由古希腊语中表示“家”（oikos）和“管理”（nemein）的词组成，字面意思是“家庭管理”。

If Anabasis reveals Xenophon the geographer, his other work, Oeconomicus, written with the same attention to detail, unveils Xenophon the economist. Oeconomicus is the first economics book ever written. Our word “economics” comes from this word, deriving from the ancient Greek words for “home” (oikos) and “to manage” (nemein), and literally translated as “household management.”

色诺芬写作的年代，希腊已经实行了货币制度。如果我们把他的作品（约公元前400-350年）与货币制度出现之前的社会作品，例如荷马的古希腊英雄神话（约公元前700年）进行比较，就能看出希腊人在这两个世纪间的思维方式发生了转变。^两位作家笔下的社会截然不同，关注点、哲学、规范和道德也各不相同。希腊社会发生了变化。早期的传说讲述的是英雄和恶棍的奇幻故事；而色诺芬的作品则更贴近现实。他描写了人们表达怀疑、寻求证据以及做着平凡而实际的事情。在荷马时代，众神解答了所有重大问题，但从公元前500年左右开始，古希腊人开始发展出更为复杂的思维方式。他们在很短的时间内就从依赖“软性思维”（即运用神话和神祇的概念来理解世界）转向了“硬性思维”。^在这一时期，个人逻辑和推理挑战了宗教和神话。³这标志着希腊人从所谓的“神话”（mythos ）转向了“逻辑”（logos）。神话依赖于叙事；而逻辑则包含逻辑和理性分析——这是经济学的基础。从荷马时代到色诺芬时代，是什么改变了希腊人的思维方式？货币和铸币是否与这种转变有关？

Xenophon was writing after coinage and money had been adopted in Greece. If we compare his writing (around 400–350 BCE) to something from a precoinage society, like Homer’s myths of the ancient Greek heroes (written around 700 BCE), we can discern a shift in Greek thinking in the intervening two centuries.² Each writer describes quite different societies, with different concerns and philosophies, norms, and morals. Something had changed in Greek society. Earlier legends were about heroes and villains performing fantastical acts; Xenophon’s writing was based more in reality. He described people expressing doubt, looking for proof, and doing ordinary, practical things. In Homer’s time, the gods answered all the big questions, but from around 500 BCE onward, the ancient Greeks had begun to develop more sophisticated thought processes. They had moved in quite a short space of time from reliance on “soft thinking,” using myths and notions of the divine to guide their understanding of the world, to “hard thinking,” in which individual logic and reasoning challenge religion and myth.³ This was a shift from what the Greeks termed mythos to what they called logos. Mythos relied on narrative; logos, on the other hand, entailed logical and rational analysis—the basis of economics. What altered the Greek mind between Homer’s time and Xenophon’s time? And could money and coinage have had something to do with this shift?

银猫头鹰

Silver owls

希腊人建立了一个庞大的帝国，以雅典为中心，通过贸易、共同的文化和共同的货币——希腊四德拉克马——将各地松散地联系在一起。与早期以农业为基础、依赖粮食盈余的波斯帝国不同，即使在希腊文化鼎盛时期，雅典人^也无法自给自足。他们依赖进口粮食。由于希腊人很少试图征服大片农田，他们不得不想办法说服他人为他们种植作物。在希腊文明之前，我们很少看到人口大幅增长而没有大量农业盈余支撑的现象。即使是新兴的贸易者吕底亚人也拥有大片肥沃的土地。然而，在公元前480年至450年间，雅典的人口增长了约80%，从大约3万人增加到5.4万人。他们是^如何做到的呢？

The Greeks built an immense empire, based in Athens and loosely connected by trade, a common culture, and a common currency, the Greek tetradrachm. Unlike the earlier Persian Empire, which had been agriculture-based, relying on grain surpluses, the Athenians, even at the height of Greek culture, couldn’t feed themselves.⁴ They depended on imported grain. As they rarely sought to conquer vast tracts of agricultural land, the Greeks had to come up with a way to coax others to grow crops for them. Up until Greek civilization, we don’t see large population increases that were not also sustained by huge agricultural surpluses. Even those fledgling retailers, the Lydians, held a large fertile landmass. Yet between 480 and 450 BCE the population of Athens rose by around 80 percent, from approximately 30,000 to 54,000.⁵ How did they do it?

这正是希腊金融的精髓所在。一个幅员辽阔的帝国在货币创新方面取得了巨大成功，并建立了一套行之有效的法律体系，使得相隔数百英里的贸易站得以设立。这个帝国完全依赖外国贸易来供应雅典。到公元前五世纪，雅典进口的商品占其总消费量的四分之三。它的主要产品。6希腊人正通过一条条贸易路线逐步扩张他们的帝国^。

Herein lies the genius of Greek finance. A sprawling empire managed to innovate so efficiently in coins and money and develop an effective enough legal system that trading outposts could be set up hundreds of miles apart. This empire was entirely dependent on foreigners to willingly feed Athens. By the fifth century BCE, Athens was importing three quarters of its staples.⁶ The Greeks were expanding their empire one trade route at a time.

雅典人虽然土地不多，但他们拥有海洋、港口和丰富的白银。在雅典以南的劳里翁，蕴藏着古代世界最丰富的银矿之一。正如金币改变了吕底亚社会一样，银币也改变了希腊。从公元前六世纪末开始，希腊人疯狂开采白银，铸造了著名的银币：一面是猫头鹰，另一面是女神雅典娜。猫头鹰嘴里衔着橄榄枝，象征着雅典最重要的农作物之一——橄榄油。这种银币被称为四德拉克马，相当于四个德拉克马，德拉克马是雅典最基本的计量单位。它是古代世界铸造最广泛的硬币，流通了700多年。据估计，在此期间，铸造的^四德拉克马超过1.2亿枚。

Athenians didn’t have much land, but they had the sea, the port, and lots of silver. In Laurion, just south of Athens, lay one of the richest silver deposits in the ancient world. Just as gold coins transformed Lydian society, silver coins transformed Greece. From the late sixth century BCE, the Greeks went into mining overdrive, minting their famous silver coin with an owl on one side and the goddess Athena on the other. The owl has an olive sprig in its mouth, symbolizing one of the most important crops in Athens, olive oil. Called the tetradrachm, the silver coin corresponded to four drachmas, the most basic unit of measurement in Athens. It was the most widely minted coin in the ancient world, lasting over 700 years in constant usage. Over that period, it is thought more than 120 million coins were minted.⁷

鉴于如此巨大的生产规模，任何时候都可能有数百万枚德拉克马在流通。一枚德拉克马大致相当于一天的劳动成果，^这展现了货币化希腊经济的活力。硬币从雅典经比雷埃夫斯港源源不断地涌出，而来自爱琴海沿岸及更远地区的货物则源源不断地流入，这在整个帝国范围内创造了经济活动，并维持着众多以猫头鹰图案货币相连的贸易站的运转。商品、奢侈品、奴隶、性，所有事物都被赋予了价格和面额。有了德拉克马，农民、工匠和商人就拥有了一种稳定的交换媒介。

Given this level of production, at any one time there might be millions of drachmas in circulation. With one drachma being roughly equal to a day’s labor,⁸ this gives a sense of the dynamism of the monetized Greek economy. Coins flooded out of Athens at the port of Piraeus and goods flowed in from all over the Aegean littoral and beyond, generating economic activity throughout the empire and sustaining the many trading outposts linked by their owl currency. Commodities, luxuries, slaves, sex were all given a price and a denomination. With the drachma, farmers, artisans, and merchants had a stable medium of exchange.

在早期以交换为主导的社会中，贸易依赖于由等级制度、传统、分享和互惠所构成的关系网络。然而，大量的货币使希腊人得以沿着吕底亚人开辟的道路走得更远。货币简化了交易。利润可以通过货币来计算。个人无需再为互惠和重复交易而烦恼。货币通过一笔笔交易，赋予人们更多的自主权。但这把双刃剑也带来了负面影响。社会稳定被货币颠覆；旧的传统被新的规则所取代。

In earlier exchange-driven societies, trade was dependent on a web of relationships defined by hierarchy, tradition, sharing, and reciprocity. However, abundant coins allowed the Greeks to move further along the journey forged by the Lydians. Coins simplified things. Profit could be calculated by an individual without the need to get tied up in knots worrying about reciprocity and repeat transactions. Money was, transaction by transaction, giving people slightly more autonomy. This was a double-edged sword. The stability of society had been upturned by coins; old traditions were replaced by new rules.

希腊人面临着一个问题：随着一些人变得更加独立自主，我们如何知道谁是领导者？我们能信任谁？我们应该如何共处？在这个快速扩张的、以货币为基础的现代社会中，希腊人开始思考我们的权利和责任，并提出了一种全新的思考方式。如果社会建立在僵化的等级制度之上，统治就很容易。恐怖是控制和制度的主要手段，宗教也往往建立在恐惧和戒律之上。在一个以金钱为媒介、社会地位具有一定流动性的社会中，理性凌驾于情感之上，而深思熟虑则挑战着人们对规则的盲从^。

The Greeks were facing a problem: With some people becoming more autonomous, how do we know who is boss? Who can we trust? How should we live together? Greeks began to come up with an entirely new way of thinking about our rights and responsibilities in this modern coin-based society, which was expanding rapidly. If society is based on a rigid caste system, it’s easy to rule. Terror is a dominant tool of control and institutions, and religions tend to be based around fear and strictures. In a society mediated by money, where social status is somewhat mobile, rationality gains prominence over emotion and hard thinking challenges rule following.⁹

随着希腊经济货币化程度的不断加深，希腊人的思想也日趋成熟，由此产生了许多至今仍影响深远的哲学突破。具备金融素养的公民与缺乏金融素养的公民的思维方式截然不同。例如，色诺芬曾深入探讨价值的抽象概念，区分了具有我们现在所说的“使用价值”的商品和纯粹具有“交换价值”的商品。他曾在一个故事中举过笛子的例子。不会吹笛子的人对笛子没有任何用处。然而，由于笛子可以换取金钱或其他商品，因此它具有交换价值。色诺芬的开拓性贡献不仅体现在这些抽象问题上。尽管以现代标准来看，他算不上女权主义者，但色诺芬也认为“夫妻应该在家中共同协作” ^¹⁰，并且“妻子应该……妻子作为家庭管理的全面参与者，对庄园的福祉所作出的贡献与丈夫不相上下。” ¹¹

As the Greek economy continued to become more monetized, the Greek mind became ever more sophisticated, leading to many of the philosophical breakthroughs that remain with us to this day. A financially literate citizen thinks very differently from a financially illiterate one. For instance, Xenophon was grappling with the abstract notion of value, distinguishing between goods that have what we would now call “use value,” and those that purely have “exchange value.” The illustrative example used in one story is the flute. A person who cannot play the flute doesn’t have any use for it. However, because it can be exchanged for money or other goods, it has exchange value. And it wasn’t just in these abstract matters that Oeconomicus was breaking new ground. While hardly a feminist by modern standards, Xenophon also argued that “wives and husbands should be co-workers in the household”¹⁰ and “the wife who is a full partner in household management contributes as much to the welfare of the estate as does her husband.”¹¹

贯穿《经济学》始终的是他对日常问题的普遍关注，其核心是如何组织社会和家庭——换句话说，就是现代经济学。色诺芬关注的重点是货币的动态和哲学基础，以及如何利用货币建立繁荣合作的社会。他论述了如何组织体系、如何最大限度地利用资源、如何记账、如何估价、如何比较成本和利润。这些都是复杂的问题，但在色诺芬的时代，希腊城市社会中的普通民众的理财能力正在不断提高。

Running through Oeconomicus is a general concern about day-to-day issues, centered on how to organize society and households—in other words, modern economics. At the heart of Xenophon’s interests are the dynamic and philosophical foundations of money and how to create prosperous and cooperative societies using money. He writes about how to organize the system, how best to maximize resources, how to keep accounts, how to value things, how to compare costs and profits. These are complicated issues, but the average person in urban Greek society was, by Xenophon’s time, becoming more financially competent.

色诺芬的研究深受公元前490年出生的哲学家普罗泰戈拉的影响，普罗泰戈拉曾说过一句名言：“万物之尺度乃是人。” ^¹²他的意思是，如果我们唯一确定的认知仅限于眼前所见，那么我们就必须自己去思考，而不是将推理权交给神明——换句话说，要相信我们自身的理智和智慧。色诺芬与柏拉图一同师从苏格拉底，苏格拉底开创了一种逻辑思维方法。这些思想家质疑一切，开始挑战支撑旧有经济和政治体系的哲学基础，从而着手创建新的体系。正是这个充满好奇心和求知精神的社会，孕育了希罗多德（他记录了波斯战争）、希波克拉底（科斯岛的医生）和亚里士多德（哲学家）等历史学家，以及亚里士多德等哲学家。

Xenophon was influenced in his investigations by the philosopher Protagoras, born in 490 BCE, who had famously declared that “Of all things the measure is Man.”¹² He was saying that, if all we know for certain is what we see before us, then we must figure things out for ourselves rather than outsourcing reasoning to the gods—in other words, trust our own intellect and intelligence. Alongside Plato, Xenophon studied under the tutelage of Socrates, who pioneered a method for logical thinking. Questioning everything, these thinkers began to challenge the philosophical foundations that underpinned their old economic and political systems, allowing them to begin creating new ones. This curious and intellectually adventurous society was responsible for birthing historians such as Herodotus, who documented the Persian Wars, the physician Hippocrates of Kos, and the philosopher Aristotle.

最值得注意的是，时代精神的转变催生了一种以主权个人为基础的新治理体系，其缔造者是雅典政治家克里斯提尼。称之为“民主”（demokratia），即“人民统治”。 ¹³值得注意的是，这种民主理念仅适用于社会的一小部分人——毕竟，雅典大约四分之一的人口是奴隶，一半的人口是女性。与其将雅典想象成某种自由市场民主国家，不如将其视为内战前的美国南方，民主并非适用于所有人，这样或许更为准确。但那些能够接受民主的人，也投身于一系列其他具有革命性思想的探索之中。

Most notably, the shift in the zeitgeist led to the creation of a new system of governance, based on the sovereign individual, whose creator, the Athenian statesman Cleisthenes, would term it demokratia or “rule by the people.”¹³ It is important to note that this idea of democracy applied to only a small portion of the society—after all, roughly one in four people in Athens were slaves and half the population were women. Rather than imagine Athens as some kind of free-market democracy, it is probably more accurate to think of Athens as a place like the American South before the Civil War, where democracy did not apply to all the people. But those who were able to embrace democracy involved themselves in a range of other intellectually revolutionary ideas.

为什么哲学、经济学、医学、民主，以及最终形成公民参与和共和制这一彻底现代的理念，在希腊都蓬勃发展？希腊思想的演进与货币（尤其是银币）的广泛流通密切相关，绝非巧合。货币催生了个人控制和个人责任的因素。希腊人，如同之前的吕底亚人一样，会意识到拥有两德拉克马的面包师与拥有两德拉克马的公主在市场上拥有同等的购买力。这种相对平等，以及贸易如何削弱等级制度，在当时的社会必然具有革命性意义。

Why was there such a flowering in philosophy, economics, medicine, democracy, and ultimately the thoroughly modern idea of the engaged citizen and the republic? The coevolution of Greek thought and the widespread dissemination of money, particularly in the form of silver coins, is too closely correlated to be dismissed as mere coincidence. Money gives rise to an element of individual control and personal responsibility. The Greeks, like the Lydians before them, would have seen that a baker with two drachmas has equal purchasing power in the market to a princess with two drachmas. Such relative equality, where hierarchy is flattened by trade, must have been socially revolutionary.

城邦、参与和政治

The polis, participation, and politics

希腊帝国不仅是一个商业帝国，更是一个城市实体，由数十个自由自治的城邦组成——这是一种全新的去中心化治理模式。为了组织这种新型社会，一种新的理念应运而生：城邦（polis ）。公元前六世纪，在伟大的改革家梭伦统治时期，城邦制度得以稳固确立。作为希腊文明的基石，城邦是古希腊公民、社会、经济、军事和政治的基石，城邦的规则规定了公民的权利和义务^。14

The Greek Empire was not only a commercial but an urban entity, made up of many dozens of free, self-governing city-states—a completely novel decentralized experiment in governance. To organize this new type of society, a new idea emerged: the polis. By the sixth century BCE, after the reign of Solon—the great reforming Greek leader—the polis was firmly established as the foundation of all Greek civilization. The polis was the civic, social, economic, military, and political cornerstone of ancient Greece, and the rules of the polis outlined citizens’ rights and obligations.¹⁴

城邦的基石在于公民参与。积极的公民在商业、政治和思想领域都享有自由。商业活动由法院系统协调，政治以民主为基础，而独立思考则不断受到哲学探究的启发。广义而言，经济由市场支配，而市场本身又由货币维系。希腊文明是一种城邦概念，货币的组织作用使得复杂的城邦生活更容易应对。

Anchoring the polis was participation. The active citizen was a free individual in commerce, politics, and thought. Commerce was mediated by a court system, politics was underpinned by democracy, and independent thought was constantly being fired up by philosophical inquiry. Broadly speaking, the economy was governed by the market, itself mediated by money. Greek civilization was an urban concept, and the complexity of urban life was made easier to navigate by the organizational aspects of money.

当然，希腊人也像所有城里人一样，对别人抱有轻蔑的态度。米利都的诗人福基利德斯在将希腊城邦与其他古代城市进行比较时，夸耀道：“一座建在贫瘠岩石上的城邦，虽小却井然有序，也胜过荒芜的尼尼微”（尼尼微是亚述帝国的庞大都城）。 ¹⁵希腊城邦依偎在海岸边，是地中海、爱琴海和黑海周边商业活动的中心，柏拉图将它们比作“一群青蛙盯着池塘”。 ¹⁶

Of course, the Greeks, as all city slickers do, looked down their aquiline noses at others. The poet Phocylides of Miletus, comparing the Greek city-states with other ancient cities, boasted that “a polis on a barren rock, small, but settled in an orderly fashion, is greater than senseless Nineveh” (Nineveh was the enormous capital city of the Assyrian Empire).¹⁵ Greek cities, clinging to the coast, were hives of commercial activity around the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas, described by Plato as “frogs looking into a pond.”¹⁶

无论是雅典、帕加马还是马赛，每个希腊城市的中心都是集市（Agora）。这里熙熙攘攘，热闹非凡，交易、表演、调情、婚外情、思想碰撞、煽动叛乱、饮酒作乐，一切都围绕着金钱运转。人们在这里购物、学习、聊天，呼吸着空气中的气息，聆听着嘈杂的声音，感受着城市的脉搏。硬币使集市上的各个市场运作得更加高效，而小面额硬币的出现也让越来越多的人能够参与到小额交易中：你甚至可以用一枚很小的硬币买到一杯葡萄酒。

The heart of each Greek city, whether it was Athens, Pergamon, or Marseille, was the agora: the marketplace. A vibrant hive of trade, performance, flirtation, infidelity, ideas, sedition, drinking, and eating, all organized around and by money. This was the place you went to shop, learn, chat, and breathe in the smells, hear the sounds, and feel the pulse of the city. Coin-based currencies made various markets in the agora work more efficiently, and smaller denominations of coins enabled more and more people to participate via smaller transactions: you could buy a cup of wine with a very small coin.

然而，市场并非只是冷酷无情的场所。在其中流通的也不仅仅是商业活动。集市广场（Agora）成为了诗人与哲学家们的聚集地。诗人欧布鲁斯（Eubulus）为我们描绘了雅典占地34英亩的集市广场的景象：“在雅典，你会发现所有东西都集中出售：无花果、传票证人、成串的葡萄、芜菁、梨、苹果、证人、玫瑰、枇杷、粥、蜂巢、鹰嘴豆、诉讼、初榨牛奶、配给地、机器、鸢尾花、羔羊、水钟、法律和起诉书。” ¹⁷街头熙熙攘攘是希腊城市的脉搏。他们没有宽阔的大道来举行游行、宗教仪式和阅兵式；希腊城市的中心是迷宫般的街道，到处都是熙熙攘攘的人群。苏格拉底过去常在雅典的克拉米科斯区出没，那里当时是城里一个治安混乱的地区——也是各种奇闻异事发生的场所。年轻的苏格拉底与酒馆里的妓女、赌徒和酒客们闲聊，或许还有些更亲密的接触。他倾听他们的故事，了解他们的观点和苦难，同时也汲取着移民、投机者和梦想家们的经历。之后，他来到集市广场，在那里向人们提问，探讨他们的观点，并在此过程中形成了苏格拉底式的辩论方法^。18

Markets were not just hard-nosed places, though. It wasn’t only commerce that flowed through them. The agora became a hub for poets and philosophers. The poet Eubulus gives us a flavor of the 34-acre Athenian agora: “You will find everything sold together in the same place at Athens; figs, witnesses to summonses, bunches of grapes, turnips, pears, apples, givers of evidence, roses, medlars, porridge, honeycombs, chickpeas, lawsuits, first milk, allotments, machines, irises, lambs, water-clocks, laws and indictments.”¹⁷ Street activity was the throbbing heart of Greek cities. Not for them wide boulevards for processions, religious ceremonies, and military parades; the center of the Greek city was a warren of streets, full of people hustling. Socrates used to hang out in the Keramikos area of Athens, then a rough part of the city—the sort of place where things happen. Young Socrates gossiped, and possibly more, with the prostitutes, gamblers, and drinkers of the taverns. He listened to their stories, took stock of their opinions and travails while sucking up the experiences of the immigrants, opportunists, and dreamers before he graduated to the agora, where he questioned people about their views, bringing about the Socratic method in the process.¹⁸

希腊人的思想不仅关注贸易、逻辑和哲学，还在机械领域孕育了伟大的创新。古典希腊人既务实又浪漫。他们充满活力的经济，汲取并改进了来自世界各地贸易思想的成果，催生了诸多工业创新，例如活塞、齿轮、螺丝、水磨，以及用于在比雷埃夫斯港卸货的滑轮和起重机。作为商业公民，希腊人致力于降低税收。如果国王征收重税，商业就难以兴旺；要想在市场上立足，就必须尽可能多地囤积自己的产品，以便出售。

The Greek mind didn’t only concern itself with trade, logic, and philosophy; it spawned great innovations in mechanics. The classical Greeks were practical as well as romantic. Their vibrant economy, taking and refining ideas from across the trading world, came up with industrial innovations such as the piston, gears, screws, the watermill, and the pulley and crane for unloading ships in their port of Piraeus. As commercial citizens, Greeks had an interest in keeping taxes low. It’s hard to be mercantile if the king is taxing you to high heaven, and to operate in a market, you needed to hang on to as much of your own produce to flog as possible.

公元前七世纪末统治希腊的梭伦国王将高税率视为一种“奴役”。他确实向公民征税，但他通过设立财政偿债基金来实现这一点，该基金类似于国家储备金，民众将税款存入其中，希腊人用这笔资金资助国防和其他公共项目。到公元前五世纪，雅典的税率一直保持在8%以下。相比之下，埃及农民要缴纳高达50%的谷物收成和六分之一的葡萄园产量作为税款，工匠则要缴纳四分之一到三分之一的产量作为税款，这意味着大部分盈余最终都落入了法老手中。 ¹⁹ 希腊的情况则截然不同。低税率意味着他们有更多的商品可供出售，从而获得了那些印有猫头鹰图案的小银币。从这个意义上讲，新的货币体系更加民主。

King Solon, who ruled toward the end of the seventh century BCE, viewed high tax rates as a form of “enslavement.” He did tax his citizens, but he did this by creating a fiscal sinking fund, almost like a state reserve, into which the people would pay their taxes and out of which the Greeks financed defense and other collective projects. By the fifth century BCE, the tax rate in Athens remained under 8 percent. Compare this to Egypt, where peasants paid up to 50 percent of their cereal crops and one sixth of their vineyard production in taxes, and craftsmen contributed between a quarter and a third of their produce, which meant the bulk of the surplus ended up in the hands of the pharaoh.¹⁹ Not so for the Greeks. Low taxation meant they had more to sell, getting their hands on those little silver discs with owls on them. In this sense, the new monetary system was more democratic.

货币乘数

The money multiplier

硬币最初是为了支付士兵的薪饷而铸造的。在现代福利国家出现之前，政府支出的绝大部分都用于军队，而主要受益者则是士兵和武器生产者——这是一种古代形式的军工复合体。钱币学证据表明，战争时期流通的硬币数量激增。例如，在亚历山大大帝征服时期和罗马布匿战争前后，新铸硬币的数量激增；雅典造币厂的产量^高峰也恰逢伯罗奔尼撒战争时期。士兵们手持硬币，成为了商业的使者。他们与雇佣兵一起，从战场上带回硬币，并用它们交换商品，从而增加了当地的货币供应量，并创造了对商品的需求。

Coins were initially minted to pay for soldiers. Before modern welfare states, the vast majority of government spending went to the army and the major beneficiaries were soldiers and those who produced weapons—an ancient form of the military-industrial complex. Numismatic evidence points to a proliferation of coins circulating during periods of war. For example, there is a surge in new coinage around the time of Alexander the Great’s conquests and the Roman Punic Wars,²⁰ and peak production of the Athenian mint coincided with the Peloponnesian War. Soldiers, armed with coins, became the ambassadors of commerce. Together with mercenaries, soldiers brought coins back from war and exchanged them for goods, adding to the local money supply and creating demand for products.

钱币将不同的地方和民族联系起来，连接了原本相互竞争的城邦和地区；这种贸易拓展了经济视野，创造了财富。钱币也融入了宗教和文化仪式中，例如在法老神庙向神谕求助时献上一枚钱币——甚至古代的算命先生也需要付费。讽刺的是，正是由于迷信将钱币与宗教联系起来，作为献给神灵的祭品，才使得钱币的使用远远超出了商业的范畴。

Coins brought disparate places and peoples together, connecting competing states and regions; this trade expanded economic horizons and created wealth. Coins also became embedded in religious and cultural rites, such as in the popular ritual of offering a coin when consulting the oracle at Pharae—even ancient fortune tellers needed to be paid. By tying coins to religion as offerings to the gods, superstition ironically spread the use of coins well beyond the reach of commerce.

硬币的生产反映了希腊文明的经济和文化发展。尽管雅典本身在公元前200年左右开始衰落，但它所孕育的地中海世界仍然保持着希腊的特色。商业语言是希腊语，因此，希腊语在​​某种程度上就像今天的英语一样，成为了一种默认的第二语言。从公元前300年左右到基督时代，世界经历了长达三个世纪的持续经济扩张。如果我们把另一个伟大的铸币者——罗马人——也算在内，那么从公元前300年到公元200年，经济扩张持续了500年，硬币的时代与前所未有的持续经济活力相吻合^。

The production of coins mirrors the economic and cultural growth of Greek civilization. Although Athens itself went into decline around 200 BCE, the Mediterranean world it spawned remained Greek. The language of commerce was Greek and, as a result, Greek became a little bit like English today, a default second language. From around 300 BCE until the time of Christ, the world experienced a three-century period of sustained economic expansion. If we add the other great coin producers, the Romans, to this mix, we have a 500-year expansion from 300 BCE to 200 CE, where the age of coins coincides with sustained economic dynamism, never seen continuously before.²¹

古希腊罗马黄金时代文明发达、求知欲强、文化底蕴深厚，而货币的兴起与这一时期的联系很难用偶然性来解释。这种自下而上的技术发展使市场能够挑战旧有的自上而下的经济模式，推动了商业发展，并提高了古代世界大片地区的生活水平。（从大气中铅和铜污染水平的上升、证明贸易往来的沉船数量，到房屋平均面积的增加和人类骨骼遗骸的发现，考古和科学证据都表明经济扩张与货币化同时发生^。22）社会开始发生变化，人们所信仰的事物，例如宗教，也随之改变。

The link between the sophisticated, intellectually curious and culturally expressive Greco-Roman Golden Age and the rise of money is hard to put down to mere chance. The development of this bottom-up technology allowed the market to challenge the old top-down economy, driving commerce and leading to higher living standards across swaths of the ancient world. (Archaeological and scientific evidence, from rising levels of lead and copper pollution in the atmosphere and the number of shipwrecks evidencing trade, to the increasing average size of houses and human skeletal remains, points to a coincidence of economic expansion with monetization.²²) When a society begins to change, the things that it believes in, such as religion, are also altered.

金钱与一种新的宗教

Money and a new religion

基督教及其“在前的将要在后，在后的将要在前”的激进教义，为何会在特定的时间和地点出现？此前的宗教推崇强者的超凡能力，而基督教却尊崇弱者。

Why did Christianity, with its radical message of “the first will be last and the last will be first,” emerge when and where it did? Previous religions had elevated the superhuman capabilities of the strong, but Christianity exalted the weak.

与货币出现之前等级森严的社会环境形成鲜明对比的是，银币的吸引力在于它提供了向上流动的可能性，尽管这种可能性微乎其微。如果你聪明勤奋，再加上一点运气，你的社会地位或许就能提升。这也意味着反之亦然：如果你在这种新的货币经济中不是赢家而是输家，难道这不也在某种程度上取决于个人能力吗？这种可能性引发了新的哲学和存在主义困境。货币出现之前的社会组织方式完全是等级制度：你贫穷是因为你生来贫穷，这是神明的旨意，并非你的过错。可以说，这种观念中蕴含着某种安慰。

In contrast to the premonetary world of rigid caste systems, the attraction of silver coins was the possibility, however remote, of upward social mobility. If you were a smart individual who worked hard, with luck, you could conceivably advance in social status. This implied that the opposite was also true: If you were a loser in this new monetary economy, rather than a winner, was that not also based to some degree on merit? Such a possibility prompted new philosophical and existential dilemmas. The premoney way of organizing society was exclusively a caste system: you were poor because you were born poor, the gods had decided it was your fate, and it was not your fault. Arguably, there was an element of comfort in that.

在东地中海这个多民族地区，希腊语不仅是商业语言，也是思想语言。随着人们接受以金钱为基础的新价值体系，一些人开始接受一种与之相反的哲学。一种新的宗教正在兴起，并在城镇的集市上传播开来，而这些地方也正是金钱流通的地方。这种新宗教与旧神的伦理完全背道而驰：它崇尚贫穷，宣扬宽恕、慷慨和……谦卑。想想“温柔的人必承受地土”和“骆驼穿过针眼比财主进天国还容易”这些说法。在这个全新的商业世界里，那些在金钱经济中失败的人，来世得救的应许开始吸引人们的想象力，这难道令人惊讶吗？

Greek was not only the language of commerce, but also the language of ideas in this multiethnic region of the eastern Mediterranean. As these people embraced a new value system based around money, some started to embrace a counterphilosophy. A new religion was emerging, spreading in the marketplaces of cities and towns, the very places where money was also being used. This new religion was completely at odds with the ethics of the old gods: it dignified poverty and preached about forgiveness, generosity, and humility. Think about the expressions “the meek will inherit the Earth” and “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” In this new commercial world, is it surprising that the promise of salvation in the next life for those who lose out in the monetary economy starts to capture imaginations?

基督教将不平等置于其信息的核心，从而将其理念置于当时的社会背景之中。这种诞生于市场经济席卷整个地区的宗教，即使在今天，也常常被视为对抗金钱弊端的制衡力量。基督教的承诺的确是激进的。它诞生于两百年的经济增长、物质主义盛行以及商业和货币泛滥之后。它与金钱对抗，并由此谱写了西方世界最伟大的叙事之一——其中最经久不衰的意象之一便是犹大为了三十块银币出卖基督。基督教的出现，是否在某种程度上正是对货币带来的颠覆性影响的一种回应呢？

By putting inequality at the center of its message, Christianity was placing its ideas in the social context of the time. This religion, conceived when the market economy was spreading throughout the region, is often, even today, seen as the counterbalance to the pitfalls of money. Christianity’s promise was truly radical. It emerged after 200 years of economic growth, materialism, and a profusion of commerce and money. It set itself up against money in what would become one of the greatest narratives of the Western world—and one of its most enduring images is the betrayal of Christ by Judas for thirty pieces of silver. Could Christianity have emerged, in part, as a reaction to the disruptive impact of the coin?

上流社会

High society

在激进传教士耶稣基督去世后的几十年里，他的希腊语门徒遍布该地区的各个城市，传播着关于道德与金钱、谦逊与无私的新思想。但到了公元79年，庞贝城的居民似乎并没有收到关于谦逊、节制和自我牺牲的“通知”。或许他们在公共桑拿房里听到过这些，但这些思想并没有流行起来。

In the decades following the death of radical preacher Jesus Christ, his Greek-speaking disciples spanned out among the cities of the region, planting new ideas about morality and money, humility and selflessness. But in 79 CE the people of Pompeii hadn’t got that memo about meekness, abstinence, and self-sacrifice. Or if they had heard it while knocking around the communal sauna, it wasn’t catching on.

就像曼哈顿的上流人士纷纷涌向汉普顿一样，每年夏天，罗马的名流们都会逃离城市的酷暑，前往海边避暑。如同今日，那不勒斯湾、阿马尔菲和索伦托是当时的热门度假胜地，是元老院议员、将军、权贵、名厨、理发师、美甲师，以及偶尔光顾的皇帝们的第二个家。要论观赏人群，这里堪称绝佳之地：派对和节日、美酒佳肴、嫔妃嫔和在阳光下摆姿势的年轻贵族。盛夏时节，庞贝城酒馆林立，熙熙攘攘，充斥着各种八卦、谣言和暗示。对于罗马的……在意大利上流社会，八月是派对月，春假、狂欢节和万圣节融为一体，构成了盛夏的高潮。通常，地中海气候在八月中旬会发生变化，七月下旬和八月初的酷暑被倾盆大雨取代，雨水滋润了土壤，使得八月的最后几周闷热潮湿，正是放纵狂欢的好时节。如今，意大利人仍然将这个节日季称为“Ferragosto”（奥古斯都节），以纪念这位皇帝。

Much like upscale Manhattan decamping to the Hamptons, every summer swanky Romans escaped the sweltering heat of the city by heading to the coast. As is the case today, the Bay of Naples, Amalfi, and Sorrento were the choice spots, home away from home for senators, generals, movers and shakers, celebrity chefs, hairdressers, manicurists, and the odd emperor. In terms of people watching, there was no finer place, with parties and festivals, booze and good food, concubines, and young patricians posing in the sun. Teeming with taverns, midsummer Pompeii hummed, heavy with gossip, rumor, and innuendo. For members of Rome’s high society, the month of August was party month, spring break, Mardi Gras, and Halloween rolled into one high-summer crescendo. Typically, the Mediterranean weather breaks in mid-August when the intense heat of late July and early August gives way to torrential rain, dampening the soil, rendering the final weeks of August steamy and sweaty. Perfect for debauchery. Today, the Italians still call this holiday season Ferragosto—the festival of Augustus—after the emperor himself.

幸运的是，公元79年夏天，在海滨悠闲休憩的上流社会人士中，有一位名叫小普林尼的作家，他是当时首屈一指的专栏作家，我们许多对罗马生活的印象都源于他的笔触。8月24日清晨，这些彻夜狂欢的贵族们宿醉未醒，斜倚在沙发上，大口喝着柠檬和橙子味的清水，狼吞虎咽地吃着枣子和无花果，伸了个懒腰，打着哈欠，回味着前一晚的种种，也期待着即将到来的夜晚。正当他们头痛欲裂、闲聊着时，维苏威火山突然爆发，他们的世界瞬间崩塌。惊恐万分的人们四散奔逃。刺鼻的硫磺烟雾将天空染成了黑色。他们咳嗽喘息着，惊恐地从散布在海湾周围的高档别墅里看着庞贝和赫库兰尼姆这两座繁华的集市城市消失，被埋葬在熔化的石棺中。

Luckily for us, among the upper crust in the summer of 79 AD, kicking back on the seafront, was Pliny the Younger, the premier columnist of his day, through whose eyes many of our impressions of Roman life have been made concrete. On the morning of August 24, hungover after a late night, the reclining patricians gulped down fresh water flavored with lemons and oranges, devoured dates and figs, stretched out, yawning, going over the night before, and anticipating the one to come. As they recovered, heads pounding and tongues wagging, their world was suddenly and devastatingly ripped asunder as the great Vesuvius erupted. Terrified, they ran in all directions. The sky turned black with acrid, sulfuric smoke. Coughing and gasping, they watched in horror from their upmarket villas dotted around the bay as the bustling market cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum disappeared, entombed in a molten sarcophagus.

数日后，当污浊的浓烟散去，一幅奇特的景象展现在他们眼前。一切都静谧无比。在维苏威火山爆发的猛烈冲击下，熔岩和岩浆从地核喷涌而出，直冲明亮的拿波里天空，而如今这雪白的火山灰却静谧如雪，想必令人感到一丝不安。太阳不再闪耀，温暖的片状火山灰从昏暗的天空中缓缓飘落。天哪。难道众神篡改了证据，掩盖了这世纪罪行，假装这一切都只是一场噩梦？火山灰轻轻飘落在庞贝和赫库兰尼姆，对于目睹这一切的人来说，仿佛也飘落到了整个宇宙。

Days later, when the filthy smoke lifted, an extraordinary vista opened before them. All was calm. The still quietness of the snow-like blanket of ash must have been deeply unsettling after the violence of the blast that blew the top off Mount Vesuvius, projecting molten rock and lava from the earth’s core into the bright Neapolitan sky. Eclipsed, the sun no longer shone, and flaky, warm ash fell gently from the darkened heavens. Were the gods tampering with the evidence, hushing up the crime of the century, pretending it had all been a bad dream? The ash fell softly on Pompeii and Herculaneum and, as it must have felt to those who witnessed it, all over the universe.

这两座城市曾是重要的贸易中心，都被厚厚的火山灰层包裹着。随着时间的推移，世界继续运转，逐渐遗忘了它们。用燃烧的硬木树灰制成的钾肥，为作物生长创造了理想的条件。随着时间的推移，海湾周围绿意盎然的田野和牧场绵延开来，隐藏着一个非凡的秘密。1860年，朱塞佩·菲奥雷利率领的考古队在如今已休眠的火山底部挖掘时，揭开了一个被火山灰掩埋的微观经济世界。^随着每一次小心翼翼地刮开凝固的熔岩，菲奥雷利和他的团队仿佛与他们的祖先重逢。豪华别墅、雄伟雕像、角斗场、精美马赛克、面包磨坊、妓院、浴场、剧院、体育馆，甚至还有盛着剩汤的碗——一座充满活力和经济繁荣的地下城市在考古学家面前重现生机。庞贝城让我们得以直接了解罗马人的经济和社会生活：他们在哪里吃饭、如何交流、如何花钱、与谁消费、去哪里旅行以及如何投票。

Both cities, trading entrepots, were encased by a thick layer of volcanic ash. In time, the world moved on and forgot these places. Potash fertilizer, made from the ash of burned hardwood trees, created ideal growing conditions. Over time verdant fields and pastures sprawled around the bay, hiding an extraordinary secret. In 1860, as they were digging around the base of the now dormant volcano, a team of archaeologists led by Giuseppe Fiorelli uncovered an entire microcosm of economic activity submerged under this ash duvet.¹ With each careful scrape of the hardened lava, Fiorelli and his team were introduced to their ancestors. Luxurious villas, pompous statues, gladiatorial stadiums, exquisite mosaics, bread mills, brothels, baths, theaters, gymnasiums, even bowls with leftover soup—a buried city full of vibrancy and economic vitality sprang to life before the archaeologists. Pompeii offers us a direct insight into the economic and social life of the Romans: where they ate, how they communicated, how they spent their money, who they spent it with, where they traveled, and how they voted.

这座昔日繁华港口城市的遗迹向我们展示了一个以金钱为核心的经济帝国的辉煌成就。庞贝古城住宅入口大厅的马赛克镶嵌画上镌刻着“ lucrum gaudium ”（利润令人愉悦）和“ salve lucrum ”（利润万岁！）的字样。²精于算计、化腐朽为神奇的本领早已融入罗马人的血液。这座商业贸易城市的发展远远超出了其当地经济的局限。庞贝就像雅典一样，是罗马的缩影。在此之前，罗马无法养活自己，只能依靠商业说服他人为其种植小麦。

The remains of this lively port city show us the fruits of an economic empire that placed money at the center of daily life. Mosaics in the entrance halls of ancient Pompeii residences exclaim “lucrum gaudium” (profit is a delight) and “salve lucrum” (hail, profit!).² The art of hustling, making something out of nothing, ran in Roman blood. This commercial trading city had far outgrown the limitations of its local economy. Pompeii was a miniature version of Rome in the sense that, like Athens before it, Rome could not feed itself and relied on commerce to persuade others to grow wheat for it.

对于一个内陆地区相对贫瘠、除了葡萄种植和花卉之外几乎没有其他农产品的地区来说，庞贝的繁荣得益于其对贸易的积极参与。考古证据表明，庞贝人为了寻求商业机会不惜一切代价。在1860年的挖掘中，人们在一具骸骨上发现了一条镶嵌着仅产于埃及的粗略形状祖母绿的金项链。此外，还有两具非洲裔骸骨以及一尊印度象牙雕像。小普林尼的叔叔老普林尼早在几十年前就警告过，印度可能会成为罗马黄金的囤积地。 ³罗马人炫耀奢靡，痴迷于印度最精美的珠宝、丝绸和薄纱，导致与印度的贸易出现巨额赤字，而这赤字最终只能靠黄金来弥补。在普林尼看来，这种铺张浪费预示着罗马正走向一条放荡不羁的道路。他对此并不认同。从庞贝古城出土的文物，包括大量来自西地中海城镇埃布苏斯和马萨利亚的硬币，可以清楚地看出，当地人与世界各地进行着贸易往来，买卖、讨价还价^。4

For a region with a relatively bare hinterland, with little to offer in terms of agricultural produce, apart from viticulture and floral yields, the prosperity of Pompeii was a result of its embrace of trade. Archaeological evidence shows just how far the Pompeiians were willing to go in search of commercial opportunity. A golden necklace, with roughly shaped emeralds only available in Egypt, was found on one of the skeletons in the 1860 excavation. There were two skeletons of African origin as well as an Indian ivory statuette. Pliny the Younger’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, had warned some decades earlier about India becoming a hoarder of Roman gold.³ Ostentatious Romans, obsessed with the finest Indian jewels, silks, and muslins, ran a massive deficit with India that was plugged by gold. For Pliny, such extravagance signaled the licentious path down which Rome was traveling. He was not impressed. From what was uncovered in Pompeii, including large quantities of coins from the western Mediterranean towns of Ebusus and Massalia, it was clear the locals were trading with the world, buying, selling, hustling, and bargaining.⁴

Com Merx

Com Merx

庞贝城的居民崇拜利润，他们信奉的神祇正是利润的化身。在城中各处，精美华丽的马赛克和壁画上，反复出现着一个长着翅膀、手提金币袋的神祇形象。在已发现的29座商业建筑彩绘立面上，有19座描绘了墨丘利神。5^一座令人印象深刻的墨丘利神庙他装饰着中央食品市场，俯瞰着商业交易的舞台。庞贝人敬仰他，并非因为他能投掷闪电，或拥有其他奥林匹斯神祇的特质；他们向他祈祷、献祭，因为他是商业之神——谈判者、推销员、魅力四射者、值得信赖的伙伴，同时也是骗子、放贷者和交易撮合者。水银也是一种金属，它是唯一能在室温下保持液态的金属，它变幻莫测，永不凝固或固定，永远处于开放状态。水银和他的主要工具——金钱，通过交易、谈判和妥协来化解障碍。

The citizens of Pompeii worshipped profit, as represented by their favored deity. Dotted across the town, on beautifully ornate mosaics and frescoes, is a recurring image of a winged man carrying a bag of coins. The god Mercury was depicted on nineteen of the twenty-nine painted commercial façades that have been revealed.⁵ An impressive shrine dedicated to Mercury adorned the central food market, watching over the arena of commercial exchange. The Pompeiians held him in high regard not because of his lightning bolt–throwing prowess, or some other Olympian trait; they prayed and offered sacrifices to him because he was the god of commerce—a negotiator, salesman, charmer, a trusted partner as well as a trickster, moneylender, and dealmaker. Mercury is also quicksilver, the only metal that can remain liquid at room temperature, shape-shifting, ever-changing, never solid or fixed, always open to new positions. Mercury and his principal tool, money, evade obstacles by trading, negotiating, and compromising.

毕竟，罗马人创造了“沐浴、美酒和性爱会毁掉我们的身体，但它们却是生命的真谛”这句谚语。 ⁶享受这一切美好事物都需要金钱。机智过人的墨丘利凭借其狡猾的头脑、精明的头脑以及技术和金钱，主宰了庞贝的市场和集市。普通市民深谙商业的变革力量。事实上，我们今天所说的“商业”（commerce）一词，其字面翻译可以源自罗马短语“ com Merx ”，意为“与墨丘利在一起”。正是凭借墨丘利，罗马人得以改变自身，也改变了他们的帝国。

Romans, after all, are the people who gave us the expression “Baths, wine, and sex ruin our bodies, but they are the essence of life.”⁶ You need money for all that good stuff. Quick-thinking Mercury, armed with his own cunning and smarts as well as his technology, money, dominated Pompeii’s markets and bazaars. The ordinary citizen understood the transformative power of commerce. In fact, our word “commerce” can be translated literally from the Roman phrase “com Merx” or “with Mercury,” and with Merx the Romans would transform themselves and transform their empire.

罗马人是金融家，他们通过创新信贷——以承诺形式存在的货币——极大地推动了帝国的繁荣。作为信贷，资本从地方流向中央，并在中央以各种金融形式循环利用。罗马人拥有银行和银行家（也被称为“mensari”或货币兑换商）、公司、保险合同、股东资本主义、投机活动以及一套保障合同的法律体系。他们提供长期贷款和用于股权融资的债务融资、私人公司以及其他各种金融工具。支撑这一金融体系的是……信用。信用需要对金钱变幻莫测的本质有深刻的理解，金钱就像罗马神话中的墨丘利神一样，既可以是交易的促成者，也可以是骗子——总是处于流动状态，从不静止，很少留下痕迹。

The Romans were financiers who turbocharged their empire by innovating with credit—money in the form of a promise. As credit, capital flowed from the regions to the center, from where it was recycled in various financial guises. The Romans had banks and bankers—otherwise known as mensari or money changers—companies, insurance contracts, shareholder capitalism, speculation, and a legal system to underpin contracts. They had long-term loans and debt for equity financing, private corporations, and a myriad of other financial instruments. Underpinning this financial architecture was credit. Credit requires a deep understanding of the mercurial nature of money, which, like the Romans’ god Mercury, could be both dealmaker and trickster—always on the move, never stationary, rarely leaving a trace.

Pecunia non olet

Pecunia non olet

从硬币的一面看，韦斯帕芗的头像酷似埃尔顿·约翰，他看起来就像任何一位普通的罗马中年权贵。硬币的另一面则是刚刚被征服的犹太地区的凄凉象征。她被囚禁在一棵棕榈树下，双手被反绑。经过多年的冲突和征服犹太行省的种种困难，此时的韦斯帕芗——一位罗马将军——已经对犹太人忍无可忍。犹太人在加利利地区不断挑衅罗马人，叛乱不断，拒不缴纳贡赋。公元70年左右，他攻打耶路撒冷，部署了罗马最精锐的部队——罗马军团。他每月用以最珍贵的商品——盐——作抵押的硬币支付他们的薪水。现代英语中的“薪水”（salary）一词就源于这种以盐支付薪水或以与盐挂钩的硬币支付薪水的做法，而“物有所值”（worth his salt）这个表达也同样如此。韦斯帕芗这次是动真格的了。

From one side of his coins, looking remarkably like Elton John, Vespasian could be any other middle-aged Roman bigwig. On the other side is the forlorn symbol of the recently conquered Judea. She is sitting captive, hands tied behind her back, under a palm tree. After years of skirmishes and problems subduing this province, Vespasian—at this point a Roman general—had had enough of the Jews, who’d been annoying the Romans in Galilee, rebelling and failing to pay tribute. Around 70 CE, he had attacked Jerusalem, deploying his best troops, the legionnaires, whom he paid monthly with coins backed by that most prized commodity: salt. The modern word “salary” comes from this idea of being paid in salt or paid with a coin linked to salt, as too does the expression “worth his salt.” Vespasian meant business.

在犹太取得胜利，从而登上皇帝宝座之后，韦斯帕芗立即下令铸造新币，向其他躁动不安的地区发出明确的警告：如果你们胆敢挑衅，你们的下场就会像硬币上那些桀骜不驯的犹太人一样——虽然只能在自己的故土棕榈树下苟活，却沦为奴隶，而非自由人。在罗马统治下，硬币不仅仅是流通的货币，更是宣传工具，时刻提醒着数百万臣民谁才是真正的统治者。

Following his victory in Judea, which leveraged him into the position of emperor, Vespasian promptly had new coins minted with a clear message to other restless regions: if you fancy a row, you will end up like the uppity Judeans captured on the coin, allowed to live under palm trees in their own homeland, but as slaves, not a free people. Under the Romans, coins were not just currency; they were propaganda reminding millions of subjects who was boss.

帝国疆域从叙利亚延伸到约克，从科隆延伸到泰尔。人们彼此迁徙和贸易，使用罗马货币。法律、科技和货币，从东方交易香料、丝绸和珠宝，从西方交易奴隶和羊毛，从北方交易毛皮，从南方交易盐和黄金，所有这些都用罗马硬币进行买卖。罗马效仿希腊，成为世界上货币化程度最高的帝国之一，这在一定程度上要归功于其挥金如土的银行家军团，他们将广袤的领土凝聚在一起，把不同的文化、宗教和语言统一在一种帝国货币之下。最近对四具来自韦斯帕芗时期早期伦敦居民的骨骼进行的DNA检测显示，其中两人拥有北非血统，一人拥有地中海血统，只有一人是土生土长的不列颠人。

The empire now stretched from Syria to York, Cologne to Tyre. People moved and traded with each other, using Roman law, technology, and money, trading spices, silks, and jewels from the east, slaves and wool from the west, furs from the north, and salt and gold from the south, all bought and paid for with Roman coins. Rome, following the Greek lead, became one of the most monetized empires the world had ever seen, due in part to its free-spending banker-legionnaires, gelling the vast territory together, unifying disparate cultures, religions, and languages under one imperial currency. Recent DNA testing on the skeletons of four early Londoners from the Vespasian period reveals two with North African heritage, one Mediterranean, and only one native Briton.

当韦斯帕芗不炫耀武力时，他就在兴建建筑。他深谙大型公共建筑的象征意义——既能让街巷居民感到满意，又能向外来者彰显罗马的强大——因此他大兴土木，建造了无数宏伟的建筑。这座永恒之城将成为世界的中心，拥有最大的剧院、最厚的城墙、最宽阔的街道、最热闹的广场、最豪华的浴场、最顶级的战车赛道，当然还有至圣之所——罗马斗兽场，这座斗兽场正是由韦斯帕芗一手打造的——那里是人们娱乐消遣的圣地。没有任何其他大都市能够超越罗马。

When Vespasian wasn’t throwing his weight around, he was throwing up buildings. Understanding the symbolism of big public structures—how they could both keep the locals in the backstreets happy and signal to any foreigner the power of Rome—Vespasian built prodigiously. The Eternal City would be the center of the world, home to the biggest theaters, thickest city walls, widest streets, most dynamic forum, most luxurious baths, finest chariot racecourse, and of course, the holy of holies—in the Colosseum itself, which Vespasian started—the best fun and games. No other metropolis could eclipse Rome.

罗马的快速扩张需要资金。正是在这一点上，韦斯帕芗这位税务策略家大显身手。国库总是捉襟见肘，资金短缺对皇帝而言可能是致命的，因此，良好的税务规划很可能延长他的统治。韦斯帕芗是其王朝的第一位皇帝，他深知一步走错就可能断送自己的统治。他领悟到现代经济管理的一个关键要素——广泛的税基的重要性，明白“不要把所有鸡蛋放在一个篮子里”的道理，并采取了明智的做法：对多种商品和服务征收少量税，而不是对少数商品和服务征收大量税。他撒下了广泛的税收网。

Rome’s rapid expansion needed money. This is where Vespasian, as tax strategist, came into his own. The treasury was always short of cash. Running out could be fatal for the emperor, so good tax planning might well prolong his rule. Vespasian was the first of his dynasty, aware that with one false move he was a goner. Grasping an essential in modern economic management, the importance of a broad tax base, he understood the argument that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, and pursued the sensible approach of a little bit of tax on a lot of things, rather than a lot of tax on a few things. He threw the tax net wide.

除了为基督徒被狮子活活吃掉而欢呼雀跃之外，罗马人还有其他一些奇特的习惯，比如用尿液清洁牙齿和长袍。尿液中含有氨，而任何有兴趣了解21世纪洁厕剂成分的人都会发现，马桶清洁剂的主要成分之一就是硝酸铵。氨可以去除污渍，使表面洁白如新。任何一位罗马家庭主妇都知道，只需一点尿液味的氨水就能轻松擦洗掉昨晚洒了酒的长袍。罗马人还用尿液和水调成的牙膏刷牙。你或许会认为，对洁白牙齿的痴迷仅限于那些在美国经营不善的公司里混日子的人（股价越低，牙齿越白），但罗马的贵族们也试图用漂白的牙齿来掩盖衰老的痕迹。

When they weren’t cheering Christians being eaten alive by lions, Romans had other odd habits, including cleaning their teeth and togas with urine. Urine contains ammonia and, as anyone who fancies reading the ingredients of a twenty-first-century Toilet Duck will see, one of the main agents in toilet bowl cleaning is ammonium nitrate. Ammonia removes stains, leaving surfaces a brilliant white. As any Roman housewife knew, a dash of urine-scented ammonium scrubs up that toga we spilled wine on last night. Romans also brushed their teeth with a pee-and-water-based paste. You might think that infatuation with brilliant white teeth is limited to denizens of failing US companies (the weaker the share price, the whiter the teeth), but Roman toffs also tried to mask the aging process with bleached fangs.

氨水的价值如此之高，以至于罗马巨大的公共厕所里竟然雇佣了一位略显粗俗的工匠——尿液收集员。罗马人从古至今就开始建造公共厕所。他们对水力学的理解不仅体现在引水渠中（引水渠旨在用流动的新鲜水净化城市），也体现在公共厕所的建造上。韦斯帕芗，这位致力于扩大税基的君主，看到了对尿液征税的机会，于是开始按瓶收费。这意味着不仅有尿液收集员，还有专门的税务人员向尿液收集员征税。谁说每个问题都找不到解决办法呢？

Such was the value of ammonia that Rome’s gigantic public loos were home to a rather indelicate artisan, the urine collector. The Romans built public toilets from their earliest days. Their understanding of hydraulics is of course evident in their aqueducts, engineered to sanitize their cities with flowing fresh water, but also in their communal lavatories. Vespasian, the tax-base-broadening champion, saw an opportunity to tax urine and levied a charge per bottle of pee, meaning not only were there pee collectors, but there were specialist taxmen who collected tax from the urine collectors. Who says every problem doesn’t create its own solution?

韦斯帕芗是个局外人，一个趁着克劳狄王朝末期混乱局面上台的士兵。他的王朝——弗拉维王朝——并非贵族。他不过是个士兵，又怎能称得上贵族呢？或许，他精于理财和征税，恰恰源于他并非贵族出身。他比那些迂腐的贵族更懂得金钱如何购买影响力和权力，尤其对于非出身者而言更是如此。确实如此。但并非所有人都赞同韦斯帕芗的策略。韦斯帕芗的儿子提图斯，这位有权继承皇位的王子，乐于挥霍父亲的钱财，却对钱财的来源嗤之以鼻，他自诩为一位审美家。

Vespasian was an outsider, a soldier who took advantage of the chaos at the end of the Claudine dynasty. His dynasty, the Flavians, was not patrician. How could they be when he was a mere soldier? Possibly his dexterity with money and taxation stemmed precisely from the fact that he was not an aristocrat. He appreciated more than the stuffy patricians how money buys influence and power, particularly if you were not born to it. But not everyone was enamored with Vespasian’s tactics. Happy to spend his father’s money but sniffy about its provenance, Titus, Vespasian’s entitled son who would inherit the job on the old emperor’s death, fancied himself as a bit of an aesthete.

对尿液征税冒犯了他的情操。提图斯代表其他与他一样厌恶尿液的贵族发声，认为从尿液中征税有损罗马的尊严。他们怎么能使用来自这种来源的钱呢？难道在商业领域就没有禁忌吗？时至今日，贵族对商业的蔑视仍然是一种荣誉的象征。没有人比真正的上流人士更假装厌恶金钱，尤其是在他们缺钱的时候。夸夸其谈的西塞罗在他的《论义务》中评论道：“小规模的贸易应该被视为有辱人格……没有任何一种有报酬的职业比农业更好、更有成效、更令人愉悦、更配得上一个自由人。” ⁷

Taxing urine offended his sensibilities. Titus was speaking for other aristocrats who shared his distaste, contending that raising tax from urine was beneath Rome. How could they use money from such a source? Was nothing off bounds when it came to com Merx? To this day, aristocrats’ disdain for commerce is a badge of honor. No one pretends to dislike money more than the truly posh. Particularly when they don’t have enough of it. The windbag Cicero in his De Officiis comments that “trade, if it is on a small scale, should be considered demeaning … there is no kind of gainful employment that is better, more fruitful, more pleasant, and more worthy of a free man than agriculture.”⁷

势利之下隐藏着恐惧：对权力被篡夺的恐惧。金钱是一种极具煽动性的能量，其最具革命性的属性之一便是推动社会进步的能力。那些自以为是的人深谙此道，并对此感到恐惧。私人俱乐部、老派关系和其他排他性的人脉网络，正是为了筑起阶级壁垒，阻挡那些暴发户。罗马的旧势力，面对来自冒险的军团士兵和野心勃勃的行省居民的财富威胁，不得不竖起高雅的壁垒，例如礼仪、文化和其他歧视，以保护世袭富豪免受新贵的侵扰。而当商业触角伸向庸俗领域时，尿液却成了最令人作呕的东西。

Beneath the snobbery is fear: fear of usurpation. Money is an incendiary energy and one of its most revolutionary attributes is its ability to propel social advancement. Entitled people understand this and are afraid of it. Private clubs, old-school ties, and other exclusionary networks are deployed precisely to pull up the class drawbridge against richer parvenus. The Roman old guard, threatened by new money from adventurous legionnaires and provincials on the make, needed to erect barriers of refinement, such as manners, culture, and other discriminations, to protect the hereditarily wealthy from the newly rich. When it came to the vulgar reach of commerce, urine was taking the piss.

韦斯帕芗，这位身为士兵的皇帝，察觉到贵族们的蔑视，并以此为乐，同样不屑一顾地回击，用一句“金钱并非一切”驳斥了这种孝道式的势利眼。 “金钱没有气味。”韦斯帕芗深谙此道；他欣然接受金钱转瞬即逝、无迹可寻的特性。金钱是短暂的，而罗马人却对此趋之若鹜。正是对金钱抽象性、流动性和可转移性的这种接纳，促成了罗马最伟大的创新之一的诞生。为了摆脱金银供应有限的硬币束缚，极富创造力的罗马人对金钱最强大的特性之一——信用——进行了精细的调整。虽然罗马人并非信用的发明者（正如我们所见，苏美尔人就已经开始借贷），但罗马人的创新将信用提升到了一个全新的高度。

Vespasian, the soldier emperor, observed the aristocrats’ contempt, relished it, and retorted with equal disdain, facing down filial snobbery with the observation, “Pecunia non olet.” “Money does not smell.” Vespasian understood this; he embraced money’s fleeting quality, its lack of trace. Money is ephemeral and the Romans loved it. It was this embrace of the abstraction of money, its fluidity and transferability, that allowed for the creation of one of Rome’s greatest innovations. Trying to break free from the tyranny of coins, limited by the availability of gold and silver, the highly creative Romans fine-tuned one of money’s most powerful characteristics: credit. Although the Romans did not invent credit (as we saw, the Sumerians were borrowing and lending), Roman innovation brought credit to another level.

将征服转化为信用

Turning conquest into credit

随着越来越多的行省落入罗马及其军团之手，罗马可以向新征服的臣民征收更多税赋。奴隶制降低了农作物生产成本，同时提高了罗马土地和资本征收者的收益。这些盈余成为了罗马信贷的源泉。所有信贷都需要收入来偿还本金；对罗马人来说，这些收入来自臣民的口袋。试想一下，像叙利亚这样富裕的行省——拥有技艺精湛的商人、工匠、繁华的城市和肥沃的农田——一旦被纳入罗马的征税范围，情况就截然不同了。在富裕的叙利亚征税的权利，是一项极其有利可图的资产，成为征服的奖赏，在罗马广场上被拍卖给一家私人公司。这家公司被称为“公共公司”（publicani），其贵族所有者随后通过向较小的罗马投资者出售股份来利用这些资产，这与现代的私有化颇为相似，从而将公民的财富与军队的实力和贵族的利益联系起来。只要……帝国的收入来源之一是来自各地的税收，为此，罗马各阶层民众都获得了广泛的信贷，使得许多人都能参与到帝国的建设中来。投资者购买股份，是为了获得一份永续的收入来源，而这份收入来源可以由罗马公司随意增加，纳税的民众几乎没有任何发言权。我们有大量的记载表明，在公司罗马股东的授意下，这些贪婪的税吏是如何榨取各地的财富的。

As more and more provinces fell to Rome and the Roman legions, more taxes could be levied on new subjects. Slavery drove down the cost of crop production, while driving up the return to the Roman expropriators of land and capital. Such surpluses were income that acted as the fount of Roman credit. All credit requires income to pay back the principal; for the Romans that income came out of their subjects’ pockets. Consider a wealthy province like Syria—home to traders, merchants, and artisans of the highest caliber, vibrant cities, and fertile agriculture—becoming subject to Roman taxation. The right to raise taxes in wealthy Syria, an incredibly lucrative asset, was a prize of conquest, auctioned off to a private corporation in the Roman Forum. The aristocratic owners of this corporation, called publicani, then leveraged these assets by selling shares to smaller Roman investors, not unlike a privatization in modern times, thereby linking the wealth of the citizens to the prowess of the army and the interests of the aristocracy. As long as there was an income stream from the regions, a web of credit was made available to various classes of Romans, so that many had a stake in the imperial project. Investors were paying for shares to buy a stream of income into perpetuity, a stream that could be increased by the Roman corporation with little or no say from the taxed subjects. We have numerous accounts of regions being bled by these rapacious tax collectors at the behest of the companies’ Roman shareholders.

这些公司的股票持有范围很广，人们根据有关各地军队命运的投机和谣言操纵股价，在罗马广场交易时，股价也随之上下波动。罗马是一个私有化的帝国，早在公元前二世纪，作家波利比乌斯就观察到，罗马社会的几乎每个阶层都以某种方式参与了信贷和股票交易。

Shares in these companies were widely held, and they were manipulated by speculation and rumor about the fortunes of the army in the regions, pushing valuations up and down when shares were traded in the Forum. Rome was a privatized empire and even as early as the second century BCE, the writer Polybius observed that almost every stratum of Roman society was involved in the credit and shareholding game in one way or another.

在意大利各地，监察官们签订了数量庞大的合同，用于建造和修缮公共建筑，以及征收通航河流的税收，数量之多难以尽数。港口、花园、矿山、土地，总之，凡是罗马政府管辖下的交易，都外包给了承包商。所有这些活动都由民众执行，可以说，几乎没有人与这些合同及其带来的利润无关^。8

All over Italy, an immense number of contracts far too numerous to specify are awarded by the censors for the construction and repair of public buildings and for the collection of revenues from navigable rivers. Harbours, gardens, mines, lands, in a word every transaction that comes under the controls of the Roman government is farmed out to contractors. All these activities are carried out by the people, and there is scarcely a soul one might say who does not have the interest in these contracts and the profits that are derived from them.⁸

投资协会和俱乐部应运而生，投资者们汇集资金购买股份，使得所有权得以渗透到社会底层，甚至包括马术阶层及其下层民众。平民阶层则通过面包和马戏——补贴或免费的小麦以及免费的娱乐活动——来维系社会关系。罗马斗兽场的建造资金来自对各地的掠夺，而上层阶级和商人则通过源源不断的收入直接来自各地不幸的纳税人，从而获得了帝国的“附带权益”。如此一来，扩张性的帝国计划便为罗马人建立的底层民众的基本福利国家提供了资金，而上层阶级则凭借充足的信贷，过着锦衣玉食的生活。当然，罗马的财富机器并非仅仅依靠行省：罗马大约三分之一的人口是奴隶，他们被剥削的劳动也为罗马积累了财富。

Investment societies and clubs were set up where investors pooled their resources to buy shares, allowing ownership to permeate to even the lower end of the equestrian classes and beyond. The plebeian class was kept onside with bread and circuses—subsidized or free wheat and free entertainment in the Colosseum—paid for by loot from the regions, while the upper and merchant classes were given a “carried interest” in the empire by an ongoing stream of income emanating directly from the unfortunate taxpayers of the regions. In this way, the expansionary imperial project paid for the basic welfare state that the Romans created for the lowers, while the uppers, with ample credit, were kept in clover. Of course, it wasn’t just the provinces that fed the Roman money machine: roughly one in three people in Rome were slaves and their exploited labor enriched Rome too.

罗马的信贷体系造就了一个罗马的底层阶级，或者说“食利者”阶层。他们之所以能达到如今的地位，不仅是因为他们玩弄信贷，更重要的是，他们还拥有政治关系。一个或许能帮助我们更好地理解罗马金融与政治之间相互作用的现代例子，就是当今的俄罗斯以及围绕克里姆林宫的阴谋，寡头们的兴衰更迭。正如在俄罗斯一样，获得垄断权，从他人或地下资源中榨取或勒索价值，正是罗马帝国游戏的核心所在。

The credit system created a Roman drone, or “rentier,” class, that got to where they were not only by playing the credit game, but—crucially—through political connections. A modern image that might help bring the interplay between Roman finance and politics to life is Russia today and the intrigue around the Kremlin, with oligarchs falling in and out of favor. Securing the monopoly permit to extract or extort value from someone else or out of the ground, as is the case in Russia, was the name of the Roman imperial game.

由于政府合同和强制征税是罗马公民致富的重要途径，腐败、贿赂和行贿的空间巨大，也极具诱惑力。在这种疯狂的环境下，特许公司应运而生，为收费公路或高架桥等公共工程提供资金，这些工程都能为所有者带来税收和费用。虽然这些伟大的工程在一定程度上有利可图，但真正的大头还是税收，而忠诚的军团士兵的支持更使税收变得极具吸引力。这些士兵厌倦了远在他乡的无聊生活，随时准备为自己的薪水而战。在这种经济激励机制下，罗马军团不断扩张领土也就不足为奇了。帝国疆界为何远离永恒之城？金钱和信贷驱动着帝国的扩张。

As government contracts and forced levying of taxes were a significant route to wealth for the citizens of Rome, the scope for corruption, baksheesh, and bribery was enormous—and enormously seductive. In such a frenzied environment, licensed companies were set up to finance public works, such as toll roads or viaducts, which all yielded levies and fees to the owners. While these feats of great engineering were lucrative to an extent, the thick monetary gravy was in tax collecting, made all the more attractive by the support of loyal legionnaires, bored, far away from home, and ready to fight for their salary. Is it any wonder, with such a financial incentive structure, that Roman legions pushed on and on, extending the boundaries of empire further from the Eternal City? Money and credit drove empire.

在帝国扩张时期，以许可证为基础的资本主义体系、宽松的信贷、大众参与和回扣，将政治与金钱以前所未有的方式紧密交织在一起。从今天的视角来看，古罗马的金融体系与现代惊人地相似。我们往往将信贷危机视为现代现象，但当时的信贷周期与现在一样残酷无情。信贷的广泛使用使得罗马的政治和社会极易受到这个新的、变幻莫测的内部敌人——信贷周期——及其主要推手——投机者的摆布。

During the years of imperial expansion, the underlying system of license-based capitalism, easy credit, mass participation, and backhanders enmeshed politics and money like never before. When seen from the perspective of today, finance in ancient Rome appears remarkably contemporary. We tend to think about credit crises as modern phenomena, but the credit cycle was as unforgiving then as it is now. The extensive use of credit made Roman politics and society susceptible to the vagaries of this new and erratic internal enemy, the credit cycle, with its chief protagonist: the speculator.

世界首次信贷危机

The world’s first credit crisis

公元31年，克劳狄王朝的皇帝提比略在卡普里岛享受着半退休生活。这位皇帝是一位巩固政权的君主，他更倾向于外交手段而非战争。由于国库运转良好，帝国一片祥和，资金源源不断地流入罗马，利率也随之下降。和平滋生信心：人们逐渐淡忘了过去的困境，信贷市场通常保持健康，鲜有隐患。所有金融危机都发生在一段极低利率时期之后。

In 31 CE, the emperor Tiberius, head of the Claudian dynasty, was enjoying semiretirement in Capri. The emperor was a consolidator, preferring diplomacy to war. With a well-run treasury and a peaceful empire, money flowed into Rome and interest rates fell. Peace breeds confidence: people forget the bad times, and credit markets typically remain healthy with few visible clouds on the horizon. All financial crises follow a period of very low interest rates.

提比略的隐居生活被一则政变消息打破：一位名叫塞扬努斯的年轻僭位者发动政变，背后有众多元老和贵族支持——由于牵涉到巨额财富，在政变中站在正确的一方将带来丰厚的回报。但克劳狄家族并非凭空爬上权力巅峰。精明而冷酷的提比略收集情报，纵容这位野心勃勃的执政官，最终将其逼出局。皇帝和他的密探评估了哪位执政官最有希望后，便开始实施政变。昔日的盟友或许会倒向那个年轻人，于是提比略采取了行动。塞扬努斯被杀，他那群叛变的元老和贵族也被抓获。为了让所有人明白谁才是老大，提比略下令将阴谋者的血淋淋的头颅插在尖桩上，插在台伯河中。在骚乱和叛乱席卷全城的河岸边散步的市民们，都清楚地意识到，如果在广场上押错了宝，将会面临怎样的下场。

Tiberius’s seclusion was shattered by news of an alleged coup led by a young pretender named Sejanus, backed by a large number of senators and aristocrats—with so much money at stake, being on the right side of a coup could be highly lucrative. But the Claudian family didn’t get to the top without learning a few tricks. Gathering intelligence, the shrewd and ruthless Tiberius indulged the ambitious consul, smoking him out. Once the emperor and his spies had assessed which of his former allies might side with the younger man, Tiberius made his move. Sejanus was killed and his gang of traitorous senators and patricians was rounded up. Just to let everyone know who was boss, Tiberius had the plotters’ bloodied heads stuck on spikes protruding from the Tiber. Out for their evening walk on the banks of the river, in a city convulsed by commotion and revolt, the citizens were left in no doubt what could happen if you backed the wrong horse in the Forum.

面对如此众多准备背叛他的元老，提比略感到震惊，于是他采取了最能打击他们的手段：掏空他们的腰包。当时，信贷帝国正处于房地产繁荣时期，国库充盈，低利率推高了地价。以信贷为基础的罗马经济欣欣向荣。而这些财富的积累，没有哪个地方比元老院更加肆无忌惮。据历史学家塔西佗记载，到公元33年，绝大多数元老都已沦为放贷者，他们利用人脉关系在罗马城内以低利率获得资金，然后以极高的利率将资金放贷到意大利各地乃至各个行省，从中牟取暴利。

Shaken by the sheer number of senators prepared to betray him, Tiberius moved against them in the place it hurt them most: their pockets. The empire of credit was in the middle of a property boom, the treasury was full, and low interest rates had pushed up land prices. The credit-based Roman economy was thriving. And nowhere were these riches being accumulated more lavishly than in the Senate. According to the historian Tacitus, the vast majority of the senators had, by 33 CE, become moneylenders, using their contacts to access capital in the city at low interest rates before lending money out all across Italy and into the provinces at draconian rates, trousering hefty margins.

眼见叛国的元老院议员们债台高筑，又沉迷于土地投机，提比略便规定，议员们必须将一定比例的收入留在意大利的土地上，迫使他们出售行省的投机性土地以筹集资金。如此仓促地抛售土地导致地价暴跌，但议员们为购地而背负的债务却依然存在。他们的资产负债表瞬间崩溃。与此同时，那些此前一直放贷的银行也开始催收欠款。由于拥有金银的罗马富人纷纷囤积这些贵金属，流通中的货币供应量骤然减少。

Seeing that the treasonous senatorial class were up to their gills in debt and land speculation, Tiberius stipulated that senators must keep a certain percentage of their total income in their Italian lands, forcing them to sell speculative land in the provinces to raise cash. Land being dumped on the market at such short notice triggered land prices to fall, but the debts that the senators had incurred to buy the land remained the same. Their balance sheets imploded. All the while, banks that had until recently been making loans started to call them in. The available money supply contracted suddenly, as rich Romans with gold and silver hoarded these precious metals.

泰比里亚的信贷危机可能发生在2000年前，但几个世纪以来，人类对待金钱的行为并没有发生太大变化。我们在大萧条时期就目睹了类似的动态。1929年股市崩盘后，泡沫破裂，随之而来的恐慌导致土地和其他资产价格下跌。人们焦虑地囤积黄金，意识到它是珍贵的价值储存手段。然而，人们囤积的越多，金价就越高，金融体系的流动性就越少。近两千年前，提比略时代的罗马也发生了同样的事情。流动性危机迅速演变为破产危机，加剧了人们的焦虑和恐惧。整个罗马都渴望黄金和白银，但它们都被囤积起来。流动性——这种基于信心的、对金融体系运转至关重要的短暂信贷供应——已经消失殆尽。罗马面临着一场危机。

The Tiberian credit crunch may have been 2,000 years ago, but human behavior when it comes to money hasn’t changed much over the centuries. We saw similar dynamics play out during the Great Depression. After the 1929 stock market crash, the bubble burst, and in the resulting panic the price of land and other assets fell. People anxiously hoarded gold, realizing that it was a precious store of value. However, the more they stockpiled, the more the price of gold rose, and the more liquidity drained from the system. The same thing happened in Tiberius’s Rome almost two millennia earlier. A liquidity crisis quickly morphed into a bankruptcy crisis, heightening anxiety and fear. All of Rome wanted gold and silver, but it was being hoarded. Liquidity, the ephemeral supply of credit that is based on confidence and is necessary to lubricate the financial engine, had vanished. Rome faced a crisis.

最后贷款人

Lender of last resort

当形势恶化，物价开始下跌时，债务人不得不出售优质资产来偿还不良资产的债务。负债累累的罗马人不得不出售罗马、卡普里岛或那不勒斯的黄金地段房产，以偿还他们在叙利亚或埃及等地的鲁莽投资。行省地价的暴跌也导致意大利的优质地价下跌。与2008年的次贷危机一样，公元33年的罗马市场极易受到这种传染效应的影响，因为它的关联性非常紧密：新的信贷被用于投机，抵押品通常是罗马或周边地区的别墅。这些资产负债表如同绳索般相互关联，每张破产的资产负债表都会拖垮下一张。泰尔和亚历山大等商业大城市的银行倒闭了。信贷危机摧毁了元老院议员的声誉和财富。

When things turn sour, and prices start to fall, debtors must sell good assets to pay for debts on bad assets. Indebted Romans had to sell prime real estate in Rome, Capri, or Naples to pay for their reckless investments in, for example, Syria or Egypt. The collapse in land values in the provinces caused prestige land values in Italy to fall too. As with the subprime crisis in 2008, the market in 33 CE Rome was prone to this sort of contagion because it was so tightly interrelated: new credit had been lent out for speculation against collateral that was typically a villa in Rome or the surrounding area. Tied to each other like men tied to a rope, the weight of each ruined balance sheet dragged the next one over the cliff. Banks in the great commercial cities of Tyre and Alexandria failed. The credit crunch destroyed both the reputation and the wealth of senators.

经过反复斟酌，提比略意识到自己做得太过火了，事态正在失控。他时刻关注着城中民意，敏锐地察觉到，自己试图给阴谋者一个教训，向元老院议员们展示谁才是老大，却危及了整个罗马的信贷体系。这证明，在信贷周期中，金钱所释放的力量远超任何政治家或统治者。随着金钱故事的展开，我们将一次又一次地看到这一点。

Tiberius, after much deliberation, realized he had gone too far and that things were getting out of control. Always aware of the mood of the city, he twigged that in trying to teach the conspirators a lesson and show the senators who was boss, he had imperiled the entire Roman web of credit, proving that the forces unleashed by money in a credit cycle are bigger than any politician or ruler. We will see this time and again as the story of money unfolds.

提比略改变了策略。资金短缺的解决办法是什么？更多的资金，大量的资金。据塔西佗记载，这位皇帝向信贷市场注入了1亿塞斯特斯，以此拯救了银行。作为回报，皇帝要求借款人提供价值相当于贷款金额两倍的土地作为抵押。市场重新调整了平衡。提比略成为了“最后贷款人”——古代世界的中央银行家。他以罗马式的量化宽松政策，为2008年金融危机期间的美联储主席本·伯南克制定了应对方案。与美联储在2008年实施的“无附加条件”救助计划不同，提比^略利用他对铸币厂的控制权，要求借款人提供价值相当于贷款金额两倍的抵押品。流动性成本之高，实属罕见。然而，元老院议员们却无法拒绝。如果不按皇帝的条件行事，他们就会破产，所以他们以极低的价格抵押了土地，以避免被关进债务监狱和蒙受经济破产的耻辱。提比略的干预堪称典范，展现了中央银行和财政部在信贷危机中能够——而且应该——做些什么。

Tiberius changed tack. What is the solution to too little money? More money, and lots of it. According to Tacitus, the emperor bailed out the banks by injecting 100 million sesterces into the credit markets. In return, the emperor took collateral in the form of land worth double the amount of the loan. The market recalibrated. Tiberius became the “lender of last resort”—the ancient world’s central banker. He wrote the playbook for Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve during the 2008 crash, by introducing quantitative easing, Roman-style. Unlike the Fed, which in 2008 operated a “no strings attached” bailout,⁹ Tiberius used his control of the mint to demand collateral worth twice the value of any loans he lent out. Rarely could liquidity have been more expensive. Yet the senators couldn’t refuse. Not playing ball on the emperor’s terms would have bankrupted them, so they stumped up their land at a deep discount to avoid the debtors’ prison and the shame of financial ruin. Tiberius’s intervention was a master class in what a central bank and treasury could—and should—do in a credit crunch.

罗马晚期的货币

Money in late Rome

公元33年的危机以及提比略对信贷周期的管理揭示了金钱和权力如何通过神奇的机制发挥作用。信贷的运作机制错综复杂。信贷周期既带来繁荣也带来衰退。罗马从货币转向信贷，使其帝国得以扩张，但也使其财政变得脆弱。有了信贷，经济繁荣与萧条更加频繁，并且与群体心理以及贪婪与恐惧的钟摆密切相关。信贷周期深刻影响着经济和政治周期。信贷释放的能量推高了所有商品的价格，影响着国民情绪，进而引发消费、冒险以及各种由信贷可得性所触发的经济活动。经济繁荣可能导致代价高昂的错误，但信贷带来的活力和乐观情绪也推动着经济发展，在罗马帝国的例子中，也推动着帝国的扩张。这种前进的动力正是货币的作用。如果没有货币，尤其是以信贷这种波动性更大的形式存在的货币，经济扩张，无论多么不均衡，都会走向逆转。而这正是后来发生的情况。

The 33 CE crisis and the management of the credit cycle by Tiberius reveals how money and power, via the magic mechanism of credit, are intricately linked. The credit cycle both gives and takes away. The shift from coins to credit enabled Rome to expand its empire but it also made it financially fragile. With credit, booms and busts are more frequent and are tied to group psychology and the pendulum of greed and fear. The credit cycle profoundly affects the economic and political cycle. The energy released by credit pushes up the price of everything, affecting the national mood, leading to spending, risk-taking, and all sorts of economic activity triggered by the availability of credit. Upswings can lead to costly mistakes, but the effervescence and optimism released by credit also push the economy, and, in the Roman case, the empire, forward. This forward propulsion is money in action. Without money, in its more volatile costume as credit, economic expansion, however uneven it may be, goes into reverse. And this is what happened later.

罗马建立了一个以信贷为基础的帝国，以此支撑其庞大的洲际商业帝国。然而，无论其信贷和法律体系多么完善和精妙，罗马货币体系的基础仍然是金银币。罗马的主要白银来源是伊比利亚半岛丰富的矿藏，但罗马人的贸易越发达，对白银的需求就越大；因此，尽管他们贪婪地扩张，掠夺被征服民族的国库，几个世纪以来，金银的供应始终无法满足需求。这并不令人意外。金银的储量终究有限，但一个不断扩张、贸易网络日益增多、消费能力不断增强的经济体，其上层阶级渴望增长和获取新事物，最终，对金银币的需求必然会超过供应。你不可能凭空创造黄金，尽管几个世纪以来，炼金术士们一直在尝试。

Rome had created an empire of credit to sustain a vast intercontinental commercial enterprise. However, irrespective of how integrated and dexterous the credit and legal infrastructure was, the foundation of the Roman monetary system was still coins—gold and silver. Rome’s primary source of silver was the abundant mines of Iberia, but the more the Romans traded, the more silver they required; and so, despite their rapacious appetite for expansion and their plunder of the treasuries of conquered peoples, over centuries the supply of gold and silver fell short of demand. This shouldn’t surprise us. There’s a physical limit to how much gold and silver is out there, but an expanding economy with proliferating trade networks and a consuming upper class wants to grow and acquire new things, and the demand for coins will ultimately outstrip supply. You can’t create gold out of nothing, although for centuries alchemists tried.

信贷可以弥补这一缺口，但只有当人们对基本货币——也就是口袋里的硬币——抱有根本的信任时，信贷才能发挥最佳作用。最终，信贷会导致相应的债务，而这些债务必须偿还；偿还方式是用以基础货币计价的硬币和财产。正如如今的债务——无论其结构多么复杂——都以美元等货币来表示和结算一样，罗马的债务也同样以第纳尔来表示和结算。一旦改变货币的基本价值，就会摧毁人们对体系的信任。在提比略时代，罗马硬币与白银100%挂钩。几个世纪以来，这种情况发生了改变。贪婪的罗马面临着一个两难的境地：如何在白银供应固定的情况下不断扩张帝国经济，同时又能维持其硬币的价值？

Credit can fill that gap, but credit functions best when people have underlying faith in basic money, the value of the coins in their pocket. Ultimately, credit leads to corresponding debts and those debts must be paid; they were paid in coins and property that was valued and denominated by the foundational currency. In the same way as debt these days—no matter how convoluted the structure might be—is expressed and settled in a currency like dollars, Roman debts were similarly expressed and settled in denarii. Tamper with the basic value of the currency and you destroy trust in the system. At the time of Tiberius, Roman coins were linked 100 percent to silver. Over the centuries this was to change. Acquisitive Rome was faced with a dilemma: How could it keep expanding the empire’s economy with a fixed supply of silver while at the same time maintaining the value of its coins?

当一个国家的货币供应量不足以满足经济需求时，它有三种选择。第一种是维持固定的货币供应量——即不发行任何新硬币——但这意味著，如果贸易或生产增加导致流通中的商品增多，那么包括工资在内的所有商品价格都必须下降。如果经济中存在债务，工资下降将导致现有债务无力偿还。人们将不得不更加努力地工作来偿还同样的债务，这显然会导致违约。经济学中将这一过程称为“债务通缩”。20世纪30年代，美国经历了债务通缩，导致大规模违约，经济衰退最终演变为大萧条。

When a nation’s money supply is insufficient to meet the needs of the economy, it has three options. The first is to maintain the fixed money supply—that is, not issuing any new coins—but this means if there is an increase in trade or production leading to a rise in goods in circulation, the price of everything, including wages, must fall. If there are debts in the economy, the fall in wages will mean that the existing debts are impossible to pay back. People will be working more and more to pay off the same debt, and obviously this leads to defaults. This process in economics is called “debt deflation.” In the 1930s, America experienced debt deflation, leading to mass default, and a recession spiraled into a depression.

对于一个白银或黄金短缺的国家来说，第二个选择是通过贸易、借贷或掠夺来获取更多贵金属。罗马人通过贸易和借贷来获取资源，但最终，这样一个好战的社会总是会依赖掠夺。即便如此，罗马人最终还是找不到拥有金银矿藏的地方去征服了。

The second option for a country with a silver or gold deficit is to acquire more precious metal, either by trade, borrowing, or plunder. The Romans traded and borrowed but ultimately such a militaristic society was always going to rely on plunder. Even so, eventually the Romans ran out of places with silver and gold mines to conquer.

第三种方法是使用诡计。一个国家可以试图蒙蔽民众，通过贬值货币来欺骗他们。这种方法或许能暂时奏效，但人们终究会识破，最终，贬值的货币会导致恶性通货膨胀。罗马人就曾采取过这种策略。

The third approach is subterfuge. A country can try to pull the wool over people’s eyes and revert to trickery by debasing the currency. You can get away with this for a while, but people see through it, and, ultimately, the debased currency leads to hyperinflation. This is the approach the Romans took.

“贬值”指的是造币厂篡改硬币的金属成分，减少贵金属（如银或金）的含量，增加铜等储量更丰富但价值更低的金属。提比略皇帝统治结束后不久，尼禄皇帝就忍不住贬值货币。他盘算着可以蒙蔽民众，将贵金属挪用铸造更多硬币供自己使用。我们将看到，尽管尼禄以放荡不羁著称，但在贬值方面，他与后继者相比，简直是小巫见大巫。

“Debasement” means the mint tampers with the metal component of the coins, adding less precious silver or gold in favor of more abundant and less valuable metals like copper. Not long after the reign of Tiberius, the emperor Nero couldn’t resist debasing the currency. He calculated that he could deceive the general population, siphoning off precious gold to mint into extra coins for himself. And we will see that, despite his libertine reputation, in matters of debasement Nero was only in the halfpenny place compared to what came after him.

堕落蓝调

Debasement blues

到了公元260年，也就是皇帝加里恩努斯统治时期，罗马银币的含银量比提比略在位时减少了60%。由于货币贬值60%用了200年时间，这种渐进式的贬值尚可接受，因为同期经济增长远超60%。然而，接下来八年罗马货币的走势却非同寻常。

By the time we get to 260 CE, when the emperor Gallienus ruled the roost, Rome’s silver coins had 60 percent less silver than when Tiberius was top dog. As it took 200 years to debase the coin by 60 percent, that gradual debasement was acceptable because the economy had expanded by far more than 60 percent over the same period. However, what happened to Roman money in the next eight years was abnormal.

公元三世纪的罗马面临着数次威胁帝国秩序的生存危机，这些危机既体现在外部，也体现在内部。几个世纪以来作为世界唯一超级大国的地位，让罗马人觉得自己拥有一个不可撼动的王国，但这个体系内部的裂痕正在逐渐显现。奥古斯都，提比略的前任和开国皇帝，建立了一套制度。在这套制度下，只要税基得以维持，军队得到供养和保障，边境安全稳定，帝国就能保持相对繁荣、统一和凝聚力。然而，公元三世纪，随着东方萨珊王朝的崛起，罗马首次面临一个实力与其匹敌的强大势力。几乎与此同时，在西部的日耳曼边境，罗马军队遭遇了一系列令人震惊的失败。由于边境安全形势恶化，帝国可能在四百年来首次面临衰落，税基开始萎缩。随着海外征税难度加大，国内对易征税者的税收大幅增加。与此同时，加里恩努斯继续挥霍无度，并通过不断贬值货币来弥补这些开支，这加剧了人们对帝国摇摇欲坠的担忧。是罗马货币贬值导致了帝国的衰落，还是帝国的衰落导致了罗马货币贬值？

Rome in the third century CE faced several existential crises that threatened the imperial order, manifesting themselves both externally and internally. Centuries of being the world’s only superpower gave Romans the impression of an unassailable realm, but cracks were emerging in the system that Augustus, Tiberius’s predecessor and the founding emperor, had established. Under this system, as long as the tax base was maintained, the army fed, paid, and looked after, and the frontiers secured and stable, the empire could remain more or less prosperous, unified, and coherent. However, in the third century CE, with the emergence of the Sasanian Empire in the east, Rome was faced for the first time with a muscular power that could be said to be its equal. At around the same time, in the west, on the Germanic borders, the Roman army was experiencing shock defeats. With less-secure borders and the possibility that the empire might, for the first time in 400 years, be retreating, the tax base began to shrink. As it became harder to enforce taxes abroad, taxation at home, on those who were easy to tax, shot up. All the while, Gallienus continued to spend lavishly and paid for this largesse by constantly debasing the currency, reinforcing the sense of an empire unmoored. Did the debasement of Roman money lead to the empire’s weakness or did imperial weakness lead to the debasement of Roman money?

加里恩努斯在位短短八年间，便将银含量削减至仅4%。他大量铸造贬值严重的硬币。这种货币贬值表明，罗马传说中高效的税收体系已经崩溃。如果税收源源不断地流入国库，货币贬值就没有必要。只有当税收停止流入，国家资金枯竭时，一个国家才需要贬值货币以避免经济停滞。加里恩努斯统治时期货币贬值的加速，恰恰暴露出政府的混乱，也印证了罗马在各地区势力日渐衰落的事实。

Gallienus managed to cut the silver content to only 4 percent over his eight short years on the throne. He was minting increasingly worthless coins hand over fist. Such debasement of the currency suggests a breakdown of the legendarily efficient Roman taxation system. It is not necessary to debase the currency if taxes are flowing into the state’s coffers. It is only when taxes stop flowing, when the state runs out of money, that a country needs to debase its currency to avoid economic stagnation. The very acceleration of the debasement under Gallienus evidences governmental chaos and supports the fact that Rome was losing its power in the regions.

走投无路之下，加里恩努斯发行了一种新硬币来取代已经贬值但使用了几个世纪的银币。这种新硬币，这种被称为安东尼尼安努斯的硬币，名义上价值两第纳尔，但实际上含银量远低于此，由此引发的恶性通货膨胀在普通罗马民众中造成了恐慌。他们还能相信谁呢？最终，罗马硬币含银量极低，质地又极其脆弱，以至于皇帝的头像只能印在硬币的一面。公元284年，在货币混乱之中，一位新皇帝登基。

In desperation, Gallienus introduced a new coin to replace the already-debased but centuries-old denarius. This new coin, called the antoninianus, was supposed to be worth two denarii but in truth contained far less silver, and the resulting hyperinflation caused panic among ordinary Romans. Who could they trust? In the end, Roman coins had so little metal and were so fragile that the imprint of the emperor could only be minted on one side. In 284 CE, amid monetary pandemonium, a new emperor came to power.

在制度彻底崩溃、民众对罗马中央政权的信任荡然无存的情况下，像戴克里先这样一位来自达尔马提亚的士兵，竟然能够登上皇位。经济稳定时，皇位继承往往是一个相对平稳的过程。而当世界动荡不安时，一切都充满了变数。在恶性通货膨胀的混乱时期，强硬派戴克里先出手了。他就像罗马时代的哈里·杜鲁门，花了二十年时间试图整顿罗马的货币体系，却不明智地采取了各种物价上限和利率上限措施。他的努力或许降低了消费价格，但在通货膨胀依然高企、恶性通货膨胀的记忆犹新之际，这些物价上限和利率上限的实施，却破坏了原本就脆弱的信贷体系。

Conditions of complete institutional breakdown, where trust in the central power of Rome had evaporated, enabled a man like Diocletian—a soldier from Dalmatia—to emerge as emperor. When the economy is stable, succession tends to be a fairly steady process from one ruler to the next. When the world is in a state of flux, everything is up for grabs. During the anarchy of hyperinflation, Diocletian, a hard man, made his move. A kind of Roman Harry Truman, he spent twenty years trying to sort out Roman money, ill-advisedly resorting to a variety of price caps and interest rate ceilings. His efforts may have brought consumer prices down, but the consequence of caps and ceilings at a time when inflation was still high, and the memory of hyperinflation fresh, undermined the fragile working of the credit system.

任何信贷体系都建立在这样的前提之上：贷款人有放贷的动机，借款人也有借款的动机，并且双方都愿意以合理的利率进行借贷，这种利率既能奖励一方，又不会对另一方造成过大的惩罚。研究这一时期的学者指出，大约在戴克里先时期，曾经作为罗马货币基石的存款银行体系的记载开始消失。 ¹⁰戴克里先在加利恩努斯失职后试图重建货币秩序的努力，是否反而使情况变得更糟？想想他为了遏制掠夺性贷款而引入的12%的法定利率上限。如果通货膨胀率持续高于12%（而事实也的确如此），那么放贷的动机又从何而来呢？借贷活动枯竭，这或许可以解释公元300年后罗马历史文献中为何不再提及银行存款。不难理解，信贷体系为何无法从如此严重的通货膨胀中恢复过来。到了帝国末期，罗马商人之间开始以商品而非货币进行结算，这正是人们对通货膨胀极度恐惧时必然会出现的情况。

Every credit system is based on lenders having the incentive to lend and borrowers the incentive to borrow, willingly, at a rate of interest that rewards one but does not punish the other too much. Scholars of the period note that around the time of Diocletian, we see the disappearance of references to the deposit banking system that was once the bedrock of Roman money.¹⁰ Could Diocletian’s efforts to reimpose monetary order after Gallienus’s delinquency have made things worse? Consider his 12 percent cap on legal interest rates, introduced to stop predatory lending. If the rate of inflation remained above 12 percent, which it did, what incentive was there to lend? Lending dried up, which might explain the disappearance of references to bank deposits in Roman historical sources after 300 CE. It’s not difficult to see how the credit system failed to recover from such a period of hyperinflation. By the twilight years of the empire, Roman merchants were invoicing each other in commodities rather than money, which is precisely what happens when people are terrified of inflation.

毫无疑问，公元三世纪罗马统治者的本意并非要用通货膨胀摧毁国家。但这是否可能是他们行为的后果呢？罗马的衰落一直备受关注，而对于西罗马帝国解体的原因，至今仍众说纷纭。不久前，一项对各种解释的详尽调查发现，从古代到现代，历史学家们提出了210种不同的原因。¹¹我们在此并不打算对此进行定论。然而，值得思考的是，货币和信贷支撑着罗马帝国，催生了惊人的金融创新，并在数百年间极大地增强了罗马的凝聚力和影响力。罗马货币的衰落与西罗马帝国的衰亡几乎同时发生。这仅仅是巧合吗？

There can be little doubt that destroying the state with inflation was not the intention of the Roman leaders of the third century CE. But could it have been the result of their actions? The fall of Rome is a subject that has attracted immense interest and there is little agreement about why the western Roman Empire disintegrated. Not too long ago, an exhaustive survey of the various explanations found that 210 different causes had been proposed by historians from antiquity to the present.¹¹ This isn’t an argument we’re going to settle here. However, it is worth considering the notion that money and credit sustained the Roman Empire, leading to amazing feats of financial innovation that for hundreds of years greatly enhanced the coherence and reach of Rome. The destruction of Roman money and the beginning of the destruction of the western empire happened at around the same time. Is this a coincidence?

正如帝国的扩张需要时间一样，其瓦解也是渐进的，但恶性通货膨胀和信贷体系的崩溃是否是导致其衰落的直接原因？货币真的扼杀了罗马帝国吗？我们永远无法得知答案，但在历史学家列举的210种不同原因中，罗马货币的消亡无疑是其中之一。

Just as the expansion of empire took time, the disintegration happened gradually, but could the degeneration have been triggered by hyperinflation and the destruction of the credit system? Did money kill the Roman Empire? We’ll never know, but of the 210 different reasons cited by historians, the death of Roman money is surely up there.

黑暗时代

Dark Ages

想象一下，时间大约在公元900年至1000年之间，你是一位生活在西北欧的农民。你无法确切地说出自己的位置，因为你从未见过地图，对村庄以外的世界也知之甚少。你所知道的一切都与务农息息相关。你的土地属于当地的一位男爵，他效忠于一位国王。你认识的人中，没有人识字，也没有人会数数，除了手指和脚趾。你只能靠自己。不幸的是，你没有任何工具。正如我们将看到的，这会是个问题。

Imagine it’s sometime between 900 and 1000 CE and you are a farmer somewhere in northwestern Europe. You can’t say where, precisely, because you have never seen a map and have little knowledge of the world outside your hamlet. All that you know is tied up with farming. A local baron owns your land, and he professes fealty to a king. Nobody you know can read, write, or count beyond their fingers and toes. You’re left to your own devices. Unfortunately, you don’t have any devices. This, as we’ll see, is a problem.

在十世纪初的西北欧，当农民很艰难。你勉强糊口，种出足够养活自己的粮食，多余的都要上缴给领主。你从未听说过指令型经济，但你却生活在这样的经济体制下。我们可以称之为欺凌掠夺型经济。在封建社会，上层阶级欺凌掠夺下层阶级。我们距离古希腊那种具有公民意识的理念已经相去甚远——超过十三世纪。他是代议制共和国的公民。在欧洲的这片土地上，文明已经倒退。如果生活在阳光更充足、雨水更少的地方，生活或许会更好，但你却无法离开。你的家被一片难以穿越、令人恐惧的森林环绕。事实上，你讲给孩子们的童话故事里，就充满了黑暗森林的恐怖。为了生存，你必须把所有的东西都犁回地里。你辛辛苦苦清理出来的那片光秃秃的土地，总是被洪水淹没。冬天即将到来，由于庄稼歉收，看来又要经历一年熬煮树皮、乞讨救济或饿死的煎熬了。

Being a farmer in northwestern Europe in the early years of the tenth century is hard. You eke out a living trying to grow enough food to feed yourself, while giving anything extra to the baron. You’ve never heard of a command and control economy, but you’re living in one. We could call it the bully and plunder economy. In feudal societies, the top dogs bullied and plundered those below. We are a long way—over thirteen centuries—from the Greek notion of the civic-minded citizen in his representative republic. In this part of Europe, civilization had gone backward. Life might be better if you lived somewhere with more sun and less rain, but you can’t leave. Your home is surrounded by an impenetrable and terrifying woodland. In fact, the fairy stories you tell your children feature the horror of the dark forest. Everything you own you must plow back into the earth to survive. The bare patch of land that you have cleared, a back-mangling job, is always flooding. Winter is coming and, because of the crop failure, it looks like another year of boiling tree bark and begging for charity or dying of hunger.

一周结束时，你会得到些许慰藉：你和家人跋涉十英里，来到最近的教区教堂。在那里，一位身着特制长袍、头戴尖顶帽的男子，用你听不懂的语言讲述寓言故事。但你已被告知其核心要义：人生中的苦难是可以接受的，因为死后你会上天堂。哦，对了，为了确保你顺利进入天堂，教堂里的这些人会索要什一税。你收成中最好、最不脏的庄稼必须献给牧师。为此，你应该心存感激。

There is small succor at the end of the week, when you and your family traipse 10 miles to the nearest parish. There, a man in special robes and a pointy hat speaks in parables in a language you don’t understand. But you’ve been told the basic gist of it: suffering in life is OK, because when you die, you’ll go to heaven. Oh, and by the way, for the privilege of getting you into heaven, these people in the chapel ask for a tithe to ensure safe passage. Your least grimy, least blighted crops must go to the priest. And for that you should be grateful.

它被称为黑暗时代是有原因的。

It was called the Dark Ages for a reason.

没有资金，就没有进展

No money, no progress

就经济发展而言，我们现在所说的中世纪早期欧洲可以分为四个区域。东南部的拜占庭象限最为发达，货币在那里继续广泛铸造和使用。其次是西南部伊比利亚象限，即与发达的伊斯兰世界接壤的地区。排名第三的是东北部瓦良格象限——基本上……波罗的海维京人通过伏尔加河和第聂伯河与南方相连，这两条河流将拜占庭经济与商品和毛皮资源丰富的地区（即今天的俄罗斯和乌克兰）连接起来。落后的是西北象限，即今天的德国、瑞典南部、丹麦、低地国家、法国北部、英国和爱尔兰所在的欧洲地区。

In terms of economic development, Europe in what we now call the early Middle Ages can be divided into four areas. The southeastern, or Byzantine, quadrant was the most developed, and money continued to be minted and used extensively there. The runner-up was the southwestern, or Iberian, quadrant, the frontier with the developed Islamic world. In third place was the northeastern, or Varangian, quadrant—essentially Baltic Vikings connected to the south by the Volga and Dnieper rivers—which linked the Byzantine economy with the commodity- and furs-rich region that is modern-day Russia and Ukraine. The laggard was the northwestern quadrant, the region of Europe that today is home to Germany, southern Sweden, Denmark, the Low Countries, northern France, Britain, and Ireland.

中世纪早期，尽管波西米亚拥有丰富的银矿，但西北欧各地的铸币活动却十分零星。^银币和铜币在六世纪末期就已消失，而金币的流通量也日益减少。正如我们从对吕底^亚人的研究中所知，小面额硬币与城市生活息息相关，因为如果没有小面额的铜币或银币，小型手工业贸易——也就是我们今天所说的商业——就会受到阻碍。因此，毫不奇怪，这一时期该地区的城市生活开始倒退。

In the early Middle Ages, coins were minted only sporadically across northwestern Europe despite abundant silver deposits in Bohemia.¹ Silver and copper coins had disappeared around the end of the sixth century,² while gold coins circulated to an ever-decreasing extent. As we know from our study of the Lydians, small denominations of coins and urban life go together, as without small coins of copper or silver, small-time, artisan-based trade—what we might call commerce—is impeded. And, not surprisingly, urban life in the region went into reverse in this era.

与罗马人铸造大量硬币直至金属耗尽不同，这一时期的西北欧人主要回归到以物易物的经济模式，修道院成为当地经济的中心，什一税以农作物和牲畜缴纳。除了最基本的手工艺品外，其他所有产品都消失了，修道院既是神学中心，也是商业中心（尽管商业活动规模有限）。随着商业的衰落，世界仿佛缩小了。连接伦敦和马赛的罗马人的重要贸易路线逐渐萎缩。失去了货币、硬币和信贷的推动力，关键的专业知识也随之失传。人们不再生产某些东西。例如，罗马人使用的一些日常用品逐渐被淘汰，如染色布料、混凝土、釉面陶瓷、引水渠（用于饮用水和卫生设施）、铺砌道路、壁画和写实雕塑。以及肖像画、纸莎草纸、室内冲水马桶、复杂的桥梁、螺旋压力机、液压起重机、分段式板甲、骑兵鞍具、温室、灯塔、大部分玻璃制品和银器、使用鸦片和东莨菪碱作为止痛药以及使用醋作为消毒剂、中央供暖系统和外科手术器械^。3

Unlike the Romans, who minted so many coins that they ran out of metal, the northwestern Europeans of this period reverted, in the main, to a type of barter economy where the monastery sat at the center of the local economy and tithes were paid in crops and animals. All but the most basic artisanal products disappeared and the monastery acted as both the center of theology and the center of commerce, such as it was. With the lack of commerce, the world shrank. The great trading routes of the Romans, linking London to Marseille, dwindled. And without the propulsive force of money, coins, and credit, critical know-how was lost. People stopped making certain things. For example, some everyday developments used by the Romans fell from use, such as dyed cloth, concrete, glazed ceramics, aqueducts (for drinking water and sanitation), paved roads, frescoes, realistic sculptures and portraiture, papyrus paper, indoor flush toilets, complex bridges, screw presses, hydraulic cranes, segmented plate armor, cavalry saddles, greenhouses, lighthouses, most glassmaking and silverwork, use of opium and scopolamine as pain relievers and vinegar as antiseptic, central heating, and surgical tools.³

政治、经济、文化和社会等各个领域的发展都停滞不前。由于缺乏广泛的货币流通，信用几乎不可能存在。没有信用，商业活动就难以开展；没有商业，人们又有什么动力去创新，更遑论学习新技能呢？各个社群变得孤立，与邻居以外的人的联系也日益减少。我们往往通过相互模仿来学习和进步。希腊罗马的黄金时代就是一个肆无忌惮地模仿的时期。希腊人模仿吕底亚人和腓尼基人，而吕底亚人和腓尼基人又借鉴了埃及人和波斯人，罗马人又模仿希腊人，如此往复。贸易网络促进了这一过程，这些网络不仅交换金钱和商品，还交换思想和专业知识。人类学家将这种不断获取知识的过程称为我们的“集体智慧”，它是一口深藏的智慧宝库，蕴藏着各种技巧、习俗和技能，代代相传，我们不断地对其进行修改和更新。中世纪早期，这种迭代过程急剧放缓。

Progress on a variety of fronts—political, economic, cultural, and social—stalled. In the absence of widespread coinage, it’s highly unlikely that there was any meaningful credit. Without credit, there’s not much commerce, and without commerce, what motivation does anybody have to innovate, much less to acquire new skills? Communities became isolated; contact with people other than immediate neighbors dwindled. We tend to learn and progress by copying each other. The Golden Age of the Greco-Romans was a period of shameless imitation. The Greeks imitated the Lydians and Phoenicians, who borrowed from the Egyptians and Persians, and the Romans imitated the Greeks, and so on. This process was given life by trade networks that exchanged not just money and goods but ideas and expertise. Anthropologists call this constant acquisition of knowledge our “collective intelligence,” that deep well of tricks, customs, and skills passed on and disseminated collectively from generation to generation, which we overwrite and update as we go. In the early Middle Ages this iterative process slowed down dramatically.

在东方，即东罗马帝国或拜占庭帝国一带，正如我们稍后将看到的，金钱和商业持续繁荣发展，文化、科学和经济研究也同样蓬勃发展。欧洲的伊比利亚象限在安达卢西亚哈里发国及其与商业更为发达的伊斯兰世界的联系的影响下不断进步，而与富裕的拜占庭帝国相连的瓦兰吉亚象限也取得了长足发展。逐渐地，西北部地区的发展却停滞不前，被茂密的森林所环绕。西北欧需要一段时间才能赶上，但一旦赶上，它的进步将改变世界。

In the east, the region known as the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, money and commerce continued to flourish, as we will see later, and so too did cultural, scientific, and economic inquiry. Europe’s Iberian quadrant progressed under the influence of the Andalusian Caliphate and its connections to the more commercial Islamic world, while the Varangian quadrant, linked to the wealthy Byzantine sphere, also moved forward gradually. In contrast, the northwesterners languished, surrounded by great forests. It would take northwestern Europe a while to catch up, but when it did, its progress would change the world.

大教堂

Cathedrals

公元1000年左右，即新千年到来之际，我们看到一个崭新的欧洲正在崛起。从11世纪开始，西北欧经历了经济、金融、社会和政治的变革。

Around the eve of the new millennium, 1000 CE, we see a new Europe emerging. From the eleventh century, northwestern Europe began to experience an economic, financial, social, and political transformation.

十一世纪是一个模糊的时代。在印刷术出现之前，文献资料十分稀少。在文字记录缺失的地方，建筑可以帮助好奇的观察者了解历史。欧洲的^四座哥特式大教堂堪称中世纪的金字塔，它们讲述着当时的货币体系发展历程。为纪念基督诞生后的第一个千年，基督教的庆祝活动引发了宗教狂热的爆发。显灵和神秘事件风靡一时。在接下来的两百年里，与我们这位饱受苦难的农民几乎同时代的人，建造了欧洲一些最著名的大教堂，从坎特伯雷大教堂到巴黎圣母院。我们是如何从泥泞和苦难走向如此辉煌的呢？

The eleventh century is a blurry time. Before the printed word, documents were scarce. Where written records fail, architecture can help the curious observer.⁴ European Gothic cathedrals are the pyramids of the Middle Ages, and they tell a story about what was happening to money at this time. Christian celebrations to mark the first millennium after the birth of Christ led to an explosion in religious fervor. Apparitions and mystical occurrences were all the rage. Over the next 200 years, near-contemporaries of our downtrodden farmer would build some of Europe’s most famous cathedrals, from Canterbury to Notre-Dame. How did we go from mud and misery to this?

这些宏伟的大教堂，无论从体量还是气势上看，都凸显了教会的巨大权力——教会是封建经济的核心机构。权力掌握在教会和领主手中，僧侣与领主构成了一对双轴。僧侣和修道院的经费来源于向当地农民征收的什一税，以及当地骑士更为丰厚的捐赠，而骑士们反过来又向贫苦的佃农榨取更多的租金。骑士们用武力控制着农民，教会通过上帝约束骑士；僧侣和骑士们瓜分战利品，在一种互惠互利的婚姻中互相扶持。但关键在于，这种封建制度十分稳定。经济规模保持不变。新建的巨型教堂证明了圣徒们通过什一税获得的收入发生了翻天覆地的变化。在过去一千年里基本保持不变的经济，在短短一个世纪左右的时间里实现了增长。或者更确切地说，是爆发式增长。这种增长源于一项革命性的技术，它推动了经济发展，并催生了一种新的货币体系，最终将西北欧转变为经济强国。

In terms of their bulk and majesty, these gigantic cathedrals underscore the immense power of the Church—an institution central to the feudal economy. Power rested with the Church and the lord, the twin axis of monk and master. Monks and monasteries were financed by tithes levied on the local peasants, and more sizable donations from the local knights, who in turn squeezed yet more rents from the poor tenant peasants. The knights kept the peasantry in check with force and the Church kept the knights in check with God; both monk and master divided the spoils, propping each other up in a marriage of mutual convenience. But the key thing here is that this feudal system was stable. The size of the economy stayed the same. The new megachurches are evidence of a step change in the amount of cash the holy men were pulling in via tithes. The economy, which had been roughly fixed for a thousand years, in the space of a century or so grew. Or rather, it exploded. This propulsion was the result of a revolutionary technology that drove the economy and fueled a new monetary system that transformed northwestern Europe into an economic powerhouse.

派犁来

Send in the plows

当时，所有财富仍然源于土地。据估计，从公元1000年到1350年左右，中欧和西欧的森林覆盖率从40.2%下降到18.6%。欧洲开始了一场大规模的森林砍伐：森林被焚毁或砍伐，随后的土地被开垦耕种。这种转变预示着某种具有变革意义的农业技术的出现。

At this time, all wealth still stemmed from the land. From around 1000 to 1350, it is estimated that forest cover in central and western Europe declined from 40.2 percent to 18.6 percent of land. Europe embarked on a giant clearance: forests were burned or cut down and the subsequent land plowed and put under tillage. This transformation suggests the arrival of some game-changing agricultural technology.

北欧土壤潮湿、黏重，且多雨，难以翻耕，而翻耕又是耕作的必要条件。与地中海南部地区主要面临的缺水问题不同，北欧的问题在于缺水。我们这位农民使用的犁是从罗马的设计演变而来。这种被称为“刮犁”的木制犁，只能刮擦地表，形成浅沟。这些工具非常适合在肥沃新月地带使用，因为那里的表层土壤干燥，水源匮乏。由于北欧的黏土很重，这些轻薄的木犁在潮湿的土地上很容易断裂。因此，北欧人只能在小块土地上耕作，其余的土地则保留为森林。他们的土壤或许水分过多，但却富含养分，潜力巨大。如果他们能用深耕利齿的犁翻耕田地，就能获得丰收。

With its moist, heavy clay and rainy weather, northern European soil was difficult to churn, which was necessary if it was to become arable. Unlike the Mediterranean south, where a key concern was too little water, in the north the problem was too much. The plow our farmer would have been using was adapted from a Roman design. The wooden “scratch plows,” as they were called, merely scratched the surface of the earth, creating shallow gullies. These tools are ideal for use in the Fertile Crescent where topsoil is dry and water scarce, but because northern European clay is heavy, these flimsy wooden plows splintered in the soggy ground. As a result, northern Europeans farmed in small parcels of land, leaving the rest of the territory to forest. Their soil might have been waterlogged but it contained bountiful nutrients and much potential. Enormous yields could be generated if only they could churn the fields with a deep, incisive plow.

中世纪早期发展经济有两种途径。第一，增加人口。第二，获取更多土地。上一章我们看到，罗马人入侵北欧是为了获取更多土地并扩张经济。但罗马人撤离时，他们庞大的军队、卓越的组织能力和雄厚的财力也随之消失。此后，欧洲人口的增长受到周期性饥荒、高死亡率和疾病的制约。如果人口增长过快，生活水平就会下降，严重影响饮食，使人们更容易受到下一次歉收、瘟疫、饥荒或洪水的冲击。这种人口增长与土地资源限制相冲突的困境，后来被称为“马尔萨斯陷阱”，其结果是生活水平或人均收入几乎没有增长。我们稍后会详细介绍马尔萨斯，但现在，让我们先理解人口增长受到土地生产力限制这一观点。没有生产力，就没有人口增长。

There were two ways you could grow the economy during the early Middle Ages. Number one: get more people. Number two: get more land. In the last chapter, we saw that the Romans invaded northern Europe to acquire more land and expand their economy. But when the Romans left, their giant armies, organizational nous, and money left with them. The subsequent European population was kept in check by periodic famine, high mortality rates, and disease. If the population rose too quickly, living standards would fall, badly affecting diets and making the population more vulnerable to the next poor harvest, plague, famine, or flood. This conundrum, where population growth slams into the limitations of the land, would later be called the “Malthusian trap,” and the result was that living standards, or income per head, hardly budged. We will meet Malthus in a while, but for now, let’s take on board the idea that the population was hemmed in by the productivity of the land. No productivity, no population growth.

由于土地面积固定，人口数量又受限于粮食产量，这套体系的收入几个世纪以来都保持不变。人口太少，无法生产更多粮食；而粮食又不足以养活更多的人。没有剩余粮食，就没有城市化，因此城镇很少发展到比村庄规模更大的程度，绝大多数人仍然依靠土地为生。但如果他们能找到一种方法，从土地上获得更多产出，他们会摆脱这种困境。在同样多的土地上，由同样多的人耕种，就能生产出更多的粮食，从而提高农业生产力。

Because the amount of land was fixed, and because the number of people was capped by what they could grow, the revenue of this system remained static for centuries. There were too few people to make more food, and there wasn’t enough food to make more people. Without surplus food, there’s no urbanization, and therefore towns rarely grow above village size and the vast majority of people live off and on the land. But if they could figure out a way of getting more out of the land, they’d break free from this trap. More food from the same amount of land, farmed by the same number of people, would drive up farm productivity.

据信，重金属犁大约在公元1000年左右从匈牙利传入，它彻底改变了农业生产方式。它解放了大片土地用于耕种，而且由于犁体沉重，农民只需耕地一次即可。这意味着他们投入更少，收获更多。犁的出现带来了更丰盛、更稳定的收成，自罗马时代以来，首次实现了持续的经济增长。随着新式犁的出现，农业剩余产品增多，降低了食品价格，促进了人口增长，并催生了一种新事物：可支配收入，尽管微薄。或许^还有一种更新颖的东西：自由时间。现代经济正逐渐成形。然而，犁虽然至关重要，但仅靠犁本身并不足以推动经济发展。这项物质技术需要一种社会技术来更有效地组织不断增长的人口及其商业活动。这种社会技术就是货币，在经历了几个世纪的衰落之后，货币在这个地区重新出现。

Introduced, it is thought from Hungary, around 1000 CE, the heavy metal plow changed everything. It liberated huge tracts of land for tillage and, because it was so heavy, the farmers only had to plow the field once. They were getting more out and putting less in. The plow meant more bountiful and predictable harvests, leading, for the first time since the Romans, to consistent economic growth. With the new plow, agricultural surpluses expanded, pushing down the price of food, facilitating population growth and the emergence of something novel: disposable income, however meager.⁵ And maybe something even more novel: free time. The modern economy was ever so gradually beginning to take shape. But the plow, critical as it was, wasn’t enough on its own. That physical technology required a social technology to organize the increasing population and its commerce more efficiently. The social technology was money, which was making a reappearance in this region after its centuries-long decline.

资金的回归

The return of money

德国人热爱啤酒，越是本地产的越好。戈斯啤酒（Gose）就是这样一种地方特色啤酒，它在下萨克森州哈尔茨山脉中的小镇戈斯拉尔酿造已有千年历史。一句略带粗俗的谚语“ Die erst Gose geht meist in die Hose ”（第一杯戈斯啤酒直接流到裤子里）让它名声大噪——戈斯啤酒中高浓度的盐分会给消化系统带来冲击，导致不适。咸味戈斯啤酒早在十一世纪初就已广为流传。这种酒在德国中部贸易路线上广受欢迎，因为在第二个千年之交，成千上万的矿工涌向戈斯拉尔勘探白银，他们都饮用这种酒。戈斯拉尔出产的大量德国白银将使西北欧的货币重新流通，并改变该地区的发展轨迹。西北欧人一手拿着犁，一手拿着银子，开始了他们的进步之路。

Germans love beer, the more local the better, and one such regional brew is gose, which has been made for over a thousand years in the small Lower Saxony town of Goslar, nestled in the Harz mountains. It is immortalized by the scatological couplet “Die erst Gose geht meist in die Hose” (that first gose goes straight to your pants)—a heavy concentration of salt in the mix delivers a shock to the digestive system with compromising results. Salty gose was well established by the early eleventh century, popular up and down the trading routes of central Germany because it was drunk by the thousands of miners who flocked to Goslar at the turn of the second millennium to prospect for silver. The abundance of new German silver from Goslar would kick-start money back into circulation in northwestern Europe and alter the development path of the region. With the plow in one hand and a bag of silver in the other, northwestern Europeans began their march to progress.

戈斯拉尔铸造了大量的银币。仅在瑞典，考古学家就发现了超过7万枚德国芬尼和超过3万枚盎格鲁-撒克逊便士，几乎全部铸造于990年至1050年间。各种微量杂质的痕迹表明，这些硬币绝大多数是在戈斯拉尔上方的拉默尔斯贝格山铸造的。^瑞典的发现表明，这些德国硬币流传到了英国和瑞典，在那里经过重新铸造后，被用于跨越北海和波罗的海的贸易。随着贸易在新银币的推动下蓬勃发展，该地区也迎来了新的发展。11世纪，在德国和英国，根据皇家法令，城镇和商业中心都得到了显著扩张。犁的出现极大地提高了农业生产力，使农民摆脱了耕作，新的商业城镇开始繁荣起来。这些新城镇被授予皇家特许状，拥有举办市场和铸造硬币的权利。我们的两项技术——犁和重新出现的货币——瞬间融合，创造了一个全新的城市世界^。7

Enormous quantities of Goslar silver were minted. In Sweden alone, archaeologists have found over 70,000 German pfennigs and over 30,000 Anglo-Saxon pennies, almost all minted between 990 and 1050. Trace elements of various minor impurities indicate that the vast majority of these coins were minted at the Rammelsberg mountain above Goslar.⁶ The Swedish find suggests that the German coins made their way to England and Sweden, where they were reminted and then used for trade across the North Sea and into the Baltics. As trade, animated by new silver coins, took off, the region saw another development. During the eleventh century, in both Germany and England, there was a significant expansion of towns and commercial centers created by royal instruction. The plow had dramatically increased agricultural productivity, releasing farmers from the land, and the new commercial trading towns began to fill up. These new towns were given the right to host a market and also to mint coins by royal charter. At a stroke, our two technologies—the plow and reemergent money—fused, creating a new urban world.⁷

德国银币的流通范围西至爱尔兰（当时都柏林是维京人的定居点），东至基辅。整个地区的造币厂数量呈爆炸式增长，粗略估计流通中的硬币数量也因此大幅增加。在货币化方面，每个城镇都同时流通着德国原版硬币和当地重新铸造、加盖印记的硬币。千禧之交，这个常被视为黑暗、单调和暴力的时期，却标志着西北欧新货币经济的开端。

German silver traveled both to the west as far as Ireland, where mints were set up in Dublin (then a Viking settlement), and to the east as far as Kiev. All over the region, the number of mints exploded, which, taken as a crude measure of the number of coins in circulation, suggests a phenomenal increase in monetization. In each town, original German coins circulated in parallel with local reminted and restamped coins. The turn of the millennium, so often dismissed as a dark, drab, and violent time, signaled the start of a new monetary economy in northwestern Europe.

货币的出现带来了其他变化。在许多王国——例如波西米亚、匈牙利、波兰、基辅罗斯、挪威和丹麦——铸币的首次出现与基督教的正式接受同时发生，或紧随其后。这些曾经信奉异教的王国要皈依基督教——想想维京人，他们放弃了雷神托尔和奥丁，转而信奉耶稣——其宫廷必然受到了来自东方基督教社会（例如基督教拜占庭帝国）的基督教牧师、传教士和顾问的影响。正如我们所见，与欧洲大部分地区不同，拜占庭帝国的货币一直在流通，并且是当地主权的象征。货币史学家彼得·斯普福德令人信服地论证了基督教的传播和货币的传播并非巧合。^它们都是中央集权的推动力量。基督教中只有一个神、一个君主代表神在人间，以及一种官方铸造的硬币（上面有国王的头像）来强化国王在世的统治，这些观念紧密地结合在一起，形成了一个相互关联的三位一体的权力体系：世俗的、神圣的和金融的权力。

With money came other changes. In many kingdoms—Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Kievan Rus’, Norway, and Denmark—the first minting of coins coincided with, or came just after, the official acceptance of Christianity. In order for these formerly pagan kingdoms to convert—think of the Vikings, who dropped Thor and Odin for Jesus—their courts would have to have been influenced by Christian priests, missionaries, and advisors, who came from Christian societies to the east, such as Christian Byzantium. As we’ve seen, coins—unlike in most of Europe—had been continuously circulating in the Byzantine Empire and were a well-understood emblem of sovereignty there. The monetary historian Peter Spufford convincingly argues that the spread of Christianity and the spread of coins were not merely coincidental.⁸ They were both centralizing forces. The ideas of one god in Christianity, one monarch representing god on earth, and one officially minted coin (with the king’s head on it) reinforcing the king’s earthly dominion fitted together in a snug, interlinked triumvirate of power: worldly, heavenly, and financial.

离开这片土地

Leaving the land

虽然国王可能正在巩固其统治地位，但社会底层正在发生转变。随着货币流通量的增加和生产粮食所需农民数量的减少，人们在农田上花费的时间减少，意味着有更多的时间去探索世界。勉强来说，甚至包括艺术和学习。离开农场后，工人们开始专攻各种行业，并在新成立的城市定居。人们对城市生活更好的憧憬推动了移民潮。流言蜚语在其中扮演了至关重要的角色。一直以来都是如此：我们这些在20世纪80年代经济萧条的爱尔兰长大的青少年，聊天时总会听到他们的堂兄弟或兄弟在伦敦“过得很好”的故事。每一个成功的故事都激励着下一个人乘船前往。离开家乡往往是一种个人转变，而这种自主选择的行为可以带来巨大的自由，并有可能激发各种各样的想法和个人抱负。

While the king might have been consolidating his power at the top, society was shifting at the bottom. With more money in circulation and fewer farmers required to produce food, less time on the farm meant more time for exploration, and at a stretch, even art and learning. Leaving the farm, workers began to specialize in trades, settling in the new officially established cities. Migration was fueled by talk of a better life in the city. Gossip and rumor played a critical part. It has ever been thus: as teenagers brought up in a depressed Ireland of the 1980s, our chat was peppered with stories of cousins or brothers who were doing very well for themselves “over” in London. Each success story motivated the next person to take the boat. Moving away is often an act of personal transformation, and the sovereign act of backing yourself can be enormously liberating, potentially triggering all sorts of ideas and personal ambitions.

贸易在新发行的银币的推动下蓬勃发展，手工业也随之兴起，初步的市场经济由此形成。专业工匠为如今更加富裕的“上层人士”提供所需物品，通过将木材等原材料加工成椅子等衍生品来创造价值。在新兴的城镇和乡村，一种错综复杂的经济体系开始形成，面包师的收入取决于裁缝的支出。每个人的收入都建立在其他所有人的支出之上：人们消费，其他人的收入也会增加。额外的收入就成了可支配收入，可以用于消费或储蓄。在这个地区，千年以来，小工匠们第一次拥有了所谓的储蓄。随着这种相互关联的经济体系的发展，流通中的硬币数量和银行——或者至少是安全的地方——对于精力充沛的工匠们来说，存放现金的需求也随之增加。

Trade expanded, mediated by the new silver money, and artisan cottage industries developed, establishing a rudimentary market economy. Specialized artisans supplied the now-wealthier “higher-ups” with what they needed, generating value by transforming raw material like wood into a secondary good such as a chair. In the new towns and villages, an intricate economy began to evolve, where the income of the baker was dependent on the spending of the tailor. Everyone’s income was based on everyone else’s spending: as people spent, another person’s income increased. The extra income you earned became discretionary income, which you could spend or save. In this part of the world, for the first time in a millennium, a small artisan might have had something called savings. As this interrelated economy evolved, so too did the requirement for both increased coins in circulation and banks—or at least safe places—for the energetic artisan to put his cash.

随着时间的推移，人们对服装、工艺品和各种身份象征商品——从精致晚宴到丝绸、香料、兽皮——的需求逐渐出现。这些商品主要从波罗的海国家、俄罗斯和克里米亚进口。随着贸易的增长，贸易网络也随之建立起来。人际关系和新思想的出现，使得标准变得至关重要。工匠阶层制定了共同的规则，汇集资源购买原材料，并为市场制定规章制度，共同致力于建立声誉。他们认识到整体大于部分之和，合作是创新的途径，因此建立了行会，共享技能和财力，使众多工匠能够团结一致。早在十一世纪末和十二世纪初，我们就发现了行会的踪迹。

In time, demand for clothes, artifacts, and various status goods—from fancy dinners to silks and spices, hides and furs—would emerge. These goods were imported from the Baltics, Russia, and Crimea. With increased trade came networks, relationships, and new ideas. Standards became important and the artisanal class developed common rules, pooling resources to buy raw materials and formulating regulations for their market, bonded by a communal interest in establishing a reputation. Appreciating that the whole is better than the sum of the parts and collaboration is the route to innovation, artisans set up guilds, sharing skills and financial heft, allowing the many to act as one. We see evidence of craft guilds by the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

这种新经济需要一个地方供农民和工匠出售他们的产品，而这与皇家法令下兴建的城镇共同促成了集镇、集市广场和集市日的迅速扩张。在社会层面，工匠的出现为社会阶层增添了又一​​个永久性的层面：一种新的城市化特征，在收入和思想上更加独立自主，以利润和金钱为驱动力。

This new economy required a place where farmers and artisans could sell their wares, and this, together with the towns created by royal instruction, led to a rapid expansion in the number of market towns, market squares, and market days. Socially, the emergence of the artisan added another permanent layer to social stratification: a new urbanized character, more sovereign in income and thought, driven by profit and money.

城市化

Urbanization

如果你是中世纪的工匠，你生活在城市环境中，这与你的祖先——那些依附于世袭骑士或男爵的土地上的农民——截然不同。自罗马时代以来就销声匿迹的商人形象，在中世纪早期重新出现。这种社会变革可以用德语谚语“Stadluft macht frei ”（城市空气使人自由）来概括。城市空气中弥漫着自由和个人主权的激进思想，这鼓励着异见者和局外人。在那些传统、家族和血统开始变得不再那么重要的地方，城市给予了人们奖励。能力、人脉和毅力。一个在社会上闯出一片天地的资产阶级工匠，对以宗教教条为支撑的世袭家族封地这一旧秩序和权力基础构成了挑战。金钱——以及它的经纪人，商人——这股制衡力量，将逐渐动摇教会和乡绅的强大统治。

If you were an artisan in the Middle Ages, you lived in an urban environment, quite distinct from your ancestors, those peasants on the land who were beholden to some hereditary knight or baron. Absent since the days of Rome, the figure of the merchant reemerges in the early Middle Ages. This social change is captured by the German expression Stadluft macht frei (the city air makes you free). Floating in the air of the city were radical ideas of freedom and individual sovereignty, encouraging for the dissenter and the outsider. Places where tradition, family, and pedigree began to become less important, cities rewarded ability, networks, and grit. A bourgeois artisan making their way in the world acted as a challenge to the old order and power base of inherited family fiefdoms bolstered by religious dogma. This countervailing force of money—and its broker, the merchant—would gradually upset the powerful stranglehold of Church and squire.

城镇在一定程度上保障了人们的匿名性。随着人口增长和人口流动，新到城市的居民需要姓氏来区分彼此。仅仅叫“诺丁汉的约翰”已经不够了，因为诺丁汉到处都是叫约翰的人。与职业相关的姓氏解决了这个问题。在手工作坊里精湛的技艺由师傅传授给学徒，通常也意味着由父亲传给儿子。从某种意义上说，职业定义了个人，或者至少使他与众不同。在英国，我们看到了一些流行的姓氏出现，例如弓匠（Bowyer，制作弓的人）、箭匠（Fletcher，制作箭的人，源自法语诺曼语单词flech，意为箭）和弓弦匠（Stringer，制作弓弦的人）。

Towns facilitated a certain amount of anonymity. As populations were growing and people were on the move, newly arrived city dwellers needed surnames to distinguish themselves. It was no longer enough to be John from Nottingham, because there were loads of Johns from Nottingham. Surnames, attached to careers, solved the problem. Trades perfected in the artisanal workshop were passed from master to apprentice, which often meant from father to son. In a sense, the trade defined the individual, or at least distinguished him, and, in England, we saw the emergence of popular surnames like Bowyer (the bloke who made the bows), Fletcher (the bloke who made the arrows, from the French Norman word flech for arrow), and Stringer (the bloke who made the strings for the bows).

史密斯（Smith）这个姓氏是英语中最常见的姓氏，它之所以如此普遍，是因为当时对犁具金属制品的需求。姓氏传播的经济原理相当简单明了。当地的铁匠拥有稳定的工作和收入来源，因此他们的子女饮食更好，更容易存活下来并繁衍后代。这吸引了更多农民学徒，他们最终也成为了铁匠。铁匠及其锻炉、风箱和铁艺技艺的普及，也导致了科瓦奇（Kovac）（及其变体）这个姓氏在许多斯拉夫语族语言中的流行，例如德语中的施密特（Schmidt），法语中的福吉斯（Forges），葡萄牙语和西班牙语中的费雷拉（Ferrera），爱尔兰语中的麦克高文（MacGowan）等等。

The surname Smith, the most common surname in English, became ubiquitous due to the demand for metalwork for plows. The economics of name proliferation are fairly straightforward. The local smith had a reliable stream of work and income and therefore the smith’s children had a better diet and more survived to have yet more children of their own. This attracted yet more peasant apprentices who would go on to become smiths. The proliferation of the artisan smith with his forge, bellows, and ironwork skills also led to the popularity of the surname Kovac (and variations of it) in many Slavic languages, Schmidt in German, Forges in French, Ferrera in Portuguese and Spanish, MacGowan in Irish, and so on.

用更少的资源获得更多

Getting more from less

生产力是经济增长的灵丹妙药。更高的生产力提高了人均产出，降低了人均成本，从而使工资和利润双双增长。这意味着农民的收入增加了，土地价值也随之提升。随着耕作方式的普及，生产力提高，男爵、国王和教会也因此变得富裕起来，并催生了我们前所未见的现象：机械化。在这些新兴城镇中，工匠们辛勤劳作，涌现出一系列新发明，这些发明将生产力、时间和成本的概念深深植入人们的生活中。精密工程催生了机械钟，而钟表改变了世界。在新兴城镇中，没有什么比公共钟更能凸显生产力带来的转变。钟楼成为集镇的中心，用时间来衡量我们的世界。生产力和钟表相辅相成，机械钟使我们对时间的感知更加精细。农民的产量可以根据几个小时内收获的谷物数量来衡量，当然，这是用另一种精确的技术——新的银币——来表示的。

Productivity is the elixir of economic growth. Higher productivity drives up output per head and drives down costs per head, allowing both wages and profits to rise. This meant that the incomes of the peasant rose, but so too did the value of land. The baron, king, and Church got rich as the plow pushed up productivity, leading to something we hadn’t seen before: mechanization. In these new towns, as the artisans worked away, a host of new inventions emerged that would instill notions of productivity, time, and cost into people’s lives. Precision engineering led to the mechanical clock, and clocks changed the world. In the new towns, nothing underscored the shift that productivity wrought more than the communal clock. The clocktower became the center of the market town, measuring our world against time. Productivity and the clock reinforced each other, as the mechanical clock made our sense of time more granular. The farmer’s output could be gauged on the basis of how much grain was harvested over a period of hours and, of course, this was expressed in terms of that other precise technology, the new silver money.

随着男爵和红衣主教们财富的增长，他们的冒险精神也日益膨胀。如果不加以利用，拥有与生产力和金钱相关的新财富又有何意义呢？统治西北欧的诺曼统治者们开始萌生征服的念头，并在教会的默许下，利用新获得的财富资助远征耶路撒冷。如果没有农业的剩余和犁耕带来的财富，十字军东征就不会在那个时期发生。

As the barons and cardinals became richer, they became adventurous. What was the point of having the new wealth associated with productivity and money if you weren’t going to use it? The Norman overlords of northwestern Europe began to get ideas about conquest and, blessed by the Church, they used their new wealth to finance military expeditions to Jerusalem. The Crusades would not have happened when they did had it not been for the agricultural surplus and wealth generated by the plow.

自十一世纪初，随着犁的引入和银币货币的重新流通，农业生产开始出现变化。德国硬币，以及西北欧的巨变，都标志着欧洲的一次非凡变革。人口激增，更加健康富裕的北欧人开始蠢蠢欲动。欧洲的时代已经来临，时间就是金钱。黑暗时代彻底结束了。

From the start of the eleventh century, after the introduction of the plow and the reintroduction of money via silver German coins, northwestern Europe experienced an extraordinary transformation. Populations exploded and healthier, richer northern Europeans began to get itchy feet. Europe was now on the clock, and time was money. The Dark Ages were well and truly over.

心算

Mental arithmetic

1185年夏天，一位年轻人站在码头上，多年后，黑死病将从这里悄无声息地侵入欧洲。西西里岛的墨西拿港是地中海贸易的重要枢纽。港口和酒馆里熙熙攘攘，挤满了兜售商品的商贩、奴隶和农民，前往东方的诺曼十字军也络绎不绝。在小巷里，兑换商们兑换着来自地中海各地的硬币。码头上，北非商人兜售着西行的东方香料和藏红花，而北运往欧洲的当地小麦与南下的皮革和精美陶瓷一起，挤满了码头。在那个时代，种族差异如此根深蒂固，但在货币这种国际语言面前，这些差异似乎也逐渐消融了。

In the summer of 1185, a young man stood on the very quay where the Black Death would, years later, slip silently into Europe. The Sicilian port of Messina was an important hub of Mediterranean trade. Buzzing with hustlers, slaves, and farmers, the port and its taverns overflowed with Norman Crusaders on their way to the east. In the alleyways, money changers exchanged different coins from right across the Mediterranean. On the dock, North African merchants hawked eastern spices and saffron heading west, and local wheat bound for Europe to the north shared the quay with leathers and fine ceramics on their way south. Ethnic differences, so fundamental at the time, melted away somewhat when it came to dealing in the international language of money.

阿拉伯商贩们讨价还价时，我们这位来自比萨的年轻人——列奥纳多——记录着商品的价格、数量和质量。远离家乡比萨，列奥纳多漫步在集市中，呼吸着胡椒、肉桂、豆蔻的香气。肉豆蔻、杏仁、樟脑、没药、非洲粘性树脂、埃塞俄比亚树胶和埃及乳香。他仔细聆听着阿拉伯商人如何戏耍那些被誉为欧洲最精明的热那亚商人。阿拉伯人拥有欧洲人所缺乏的一项优势：心算。比萨的莱昂纳多发现，即使是欧洲最博学的学者和僧侣也难以进行心算，而普通的阿拉伯椰枣商贩却能以闪电般的速度和精准度计算重量、比例和价格。对数字的精准把握使阿拉伯人占据了优势。他们究竟是从哪里学来的这种神奇能力？

As the Arab merchants bargained, our young man, Leonardo of Pisa, noted the prices, amounts, and quality of the goods on offer. Far from his Pisan home, Leonardo meandered through the markets, breathing in the smell of pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, almonds, camphor, myrrh, sticky African resins, gum from Ethiopia, and Egyptian mastic. He listened intently as the Arab traders ran rings around even the most experienced merchants from Genoa, regarded as Europe’s sharpest. The Arabs had one tool the Europeans lacked: they could count in their heads. Leonardo of Pisa could see that while mental arithmetic was beyond the ability of even Europe’s most studious scholars and monks, the average Arab date seller could calculate weights, ratios, and prices with lightning-quick accuracy. Precision with numbers gave the Arabs an edge. Where did they learn this magic?

萨拉森人的秘密武器是数学。支撑这种全新思维方式的是零的概念，它使阿拉伯人能够进行大数计数，在脑海中构建包含正负数的资产负债表，并运用源自八世纪阿拉伯数学家花剌子模（al-Khwarizmi）的神奇工具——代数。¹^这些优势使阿拉伯人在商业上与欧洲竞争对手截然不同。欧洲商人仍然依赖笨重的算盘——这项技术自罗马时代以来就未曾改变——而阿拉伯人则展现出非凡的思维敏捷性，能够将一定数量的椰枣、无花果或葡萄干与一定数量的小麦、玉米或肉豆蔻等进行换算。他们接受来自亚历山大和塞浦路斯等地的各种硬币，并能毫不费力地用当地的西西里货币弗拉罗（follaro）找零。欧洲人处理的是金钱，而阿拉伯人处理的是金融。

The secret Saracen tool was mathematics. Anchoring this new way of thinking was the concept of zero, which allowed the Arabs to count in large numbers, to mentally conceive of balance sheets with positive and negative numbers, and to use an amazing tool, algebra, derived from the eighth-century Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi.¹ These advantages put the Arabs on a different commercial footing than their European competitors. While European traders relied on the clumsy abacus, a technology unchanged since Roman times, the Arabs displayed extraordinary mental agility that allowed them to express an amount of dates, figs, or raisins in terms of an amount of wheat, corn, or nutmeg. They accepted various coins, from places like Alexandria and Cyprus, and gave change back in the local Sicilian currency, the follaro, without missing a beat. The Europeans were dealing with money. The Arabs were dealing with finance.

西西里岛是贸易网络的中心，这条网络从亚历山大港延伸至热那亚，途经的黎波里、阿利坎特（今西班牙的阿利坎特）和马赛。贝贾亚（今阿尔及利亚境内）便是其中一个贸易站。诺曼人建造的哥特式大教堂激发了人们对蜡烛的需求。蜂蜡是当时最主要的蜡烛原料。贝贾亚的蜂蜡产业为现代法语中“蜡烛”一词“bougie”提供了词根。被蜂蜡产业吸引而到访贝贾亚的欧洲商人，发现了印度-阿拉伯数字。

Sicily was the center of a trading web that extended from Alexandria to Genoa, via Tripoli, Al’ Cant (Alicante in Spain today), and Marseille. One such trading post was Bejaia, in what is now Algeria. The dark Gothic cathedrals of the Normans spurred a demand for candles. Beeswax was the premier industry in Bejaia, which gives us the root of the modern French word for candle, bougie. European merchants who visited Bejaia, attracted by the beeswax industry, came across Hindu-Arabic numerals.

莱昂纳多的父亲是比萨城贝贾亚的一位官员，他的成长经历让他有机会接触阿拉伯教育家，这使他与意大利的同龄人截然不同。当其他意大利人背诵圣经和维吉尔的作品时，他却在阿拉伯老师的指导下学习一门全新的语言和技术：代数。当他们还在运用演绎推理时，他已经开始运用归纳分析。凭借着这些知识，比萨的莱昂纳多（即斐波那契）改变了欧洲数学的面貌，并为复杂的资产负债表管理和簿记树立了新的典范。诸如此类的创新推动了商业主义、财富创造的新时代，并最终促成了艺术赞助的兴起，而这正是文艺复兴的基础。毫不夸张地说，没有比萨的莱昂纳多，就没有莱昂纳多·达·芬奇。

Leonardo’s father was a Pisan official based in Bejaia, and his upbringing exposed him to Arab educators, setting him apart from his contemporaries in Italy. While they were learning scripture and Virgil by heart, he, under Arab tutors, was learning an entirely new language and technology: algebra. While they were using deductive reasoning, he was deploying inductive analysis. Armed with this knowledge, Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, would change the face of European mathematics and set out a new template for sophisticated balance-sheet management and bookkeeping. Innovations like these would drive a new era of commercialism, wealth creation, and, ultimately, the patronage of the arts that was the basis for the Renaissance. It might not be too far a stretch to say that without Leonardo da Pisa, there is no Leonardo da Vinci.

并非所有人都乐见这一新发展。十二世纪的英国著名历史学家、僧侣威廉·马姆斯伯里将阿拉伯数字称为“撒拉逊魔法”。这种魔法观念源于阿拉伯人能够得出看似巫术般的数学结论。究竟是谁在对他们耳语？他们又是如何能够心算如此庞大的数字的？马姆斯伯里惧怕数学的力量及其异域性。在他看来，勇敢的十字军刚刚为了荣耀上帝而从异教徒手中夺回耶路撒冷。如果伊斯兰教的魔力俘获了威尼斯商人的心，那么基督教夺取耶路撒冷又有何意义呢？

Not everybody was happy with this new development. William of Malmesbury, the monk and celebrated English historian of the twelfth century, referred to Arabic numerals as “saracen magic.” This idea of magic stemmed from the ability of the Arabs to arrive at mathematical conclusions that seemed like sorcery. Who was whispering to them? How did they know how to calculate in their heads using huge numbers? Malmesbury feared the power of mathematics and its foreignness. In his view, Jerusalem had just been recaptured from the heathen by the courageous Crusaders for the glory of God. What good would it be to capture the seat for Christianity if the magic of Islam captured the minds of the merchants of Venice?

零

Zero

阿拉伯人对“零”的概念进行了革命性的诠释，而基督教及其所依据的哲学体系却一直拒绝接受“零”的概念。零被视为虚无，而希腊哲学则否定了虚无的存在。那些奠定西方思想基础的先贤——毕达哥拉斯、亚里士多德、柏拉图和托勒密——都一致认为不存在虚无。希腊人认为他们可以通过可证明的比例、模式和几何对称性来定义一切，认为万物之间都存在关联。几个世纪以来，西方一直回避“零”的概念，这给科学、商业、会计以及许多其他日常活动带来了极其负面的后果。

Embraced to revolutionary effect by the Arabs, the concept of zero had been rejected by Christians and the philosophies that Christianity was based on. Zero was the void and Greek philosophy refuted the void. Those who framed what became Western thought—Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato, and Ptolemy—all agreed that there could be no nothing. The Greeks thought they could define everything by provable ratios, patterns, and geometric symmetry where everything has a relationship to everything else. The West avoided zero for centuries, with enormously negative consequences for science, commerce, accountancy, and a host of other daily activities.

当欧洲和基督教对零避之不及时，印度的印度教文明却对虚空和无限毫无顾忌。早在公元三世纪，他们就开始运用零的概念。与基督徒期盼灵魂升入天堂不同，印度教徒的最终目标是虚无。除了在瓦拉纳西火葬之外，灵魂摆脱轮回的唯一途径就是通过理解现实的真谛而达到虚无。当灵魂离开死亡的肉体后，它在新的肉体中的归宿取决于生前行为所积累的善恶业力。在无尽的轮回中，灵魂不断学习，当积累了足够的善业后，灵魂便能脱离肉体，进入纯粹的精神世界，与宇宙合一——换句话说，就是无限。如今，印度人常常拿这样一个笑话开玩笑：印度人给世界带来了什么？答案是：什么也没有。实际上，这意味着他们带来了一切。或许是印度教信仰让印度数学家们对零充满热情？或许这源于他们对宇宙浩瀚以及人类在宇宙中微不足道的作用的理解？

While Europe and Christianity turned their back on zero, the Hindu civilization of India had no such qualms about voids and infinities. They were working with zero from as early as the third century CE. Unlike Christians, who hope their soul will end up in heaven, the objective for a Hindu is nothingness. Other than cremation in Varanasi, the only way to liberate the soul from the cycle of rebirth is to achieve the void by understanding the true nature of reality. When the soul leaves the body that dies, its destination in a new body is determined by the good or bad karma that has accrued through behavior in life. Through endless rounds of rebirth, the soul learns, and when enough good karma has accrued, the soul is freed from the body into a purely spiritual existence, at one with the universe—in other words, infinity. Today, Indians laugh at the joke: What did the Indians give the world? Answer: Nothing. Meaning, in effect, everything. Perhaps the Hindu faith allowed Indian mathematicians to take to zero with gusto? Maybe it was part of their understanding of the vastness of the universe and humanity’s inconsequential role in it?

从数学的本质来说，零使我们能够从正数过渡到负数。我们经过零才能到达负数。如果你的数学总是基于计数，就像古希腊人和巴比伦人那样，就很难想象会越过零进入负数。负数意味着缺少某物。即使在今天，孩子们理解负数的概念仍然出奇地困难：任何一位小学老师都会告诉你，孩子们一开始都会觉得负数很困惑。对于古希腊人、后来的基督教思想家——以及我们自己的孩子来说——数学是现实的，而非抽象的。你可以教孩子一加一等于二，只需一手拿着一个苹果，另一手拿着另一个苹果。把它们放在一起，你就得到了两个。对于古代基督徒来说也是如此：两头牛他们能够理解，但负两头牛就难以理解了。

At its mathematical essence, zero allows us to go from positive numbers to negative numbers. We pass through zero to get to the negative. If your mathematics is always based on counting things, as it was for the Greeks and Babylonians, it’s hard to imagine going below or through zero into negative numbers. Negative numbers mean the absence of something. Even today, the concept of negative numbers is surprisingly difficult for children to wrap their heads around: ask any primary school teacher and they will concur that children find it confusing initially. For the Greeks and subsequent Christian thinkers—and our own children, for that matter—maths is real, not abstract. You teach a child that one and one is two by holding one apple in one hand, and another apple in your other hand. Putting them together you have two. Likewise for the ancient Christians: two cows were something they could get their heads around but negative two cows were not.

金钱毫无实际意义。

Money makes zero real

零的概念，以及小于零的概念，在某个领域才真正具有意义：那就是谈论金钱的时候。债权人拥有金钱（正数），债务人欠钱（负数）。零的另一个特性是它可以作为占位符。如果没有零，如何表示像100万这样的大数？又该如何进行加减乘除运算？实际上，正是零推动古代世界迈入了数字时代，一个充满现代数字、大数、精确性和经验主义的世界，这对货币和商业产生了深远的影响。

There is one place where the concept of zero, and less than zero, makes complete sense: when we are talking about money. Creditors have money (positive numbers) and debtors owe money (negative numbers). Another attribute of zero is that it can be used as a placeholder. Without zero, how do you represent large numbers, like 1,000,000, and how do you subtract, add, divide, and multiply them? In practical terms, zero propelled the ancient world into the digital age, a world of modern numerals, big numbers, precision, and empiricism, with enormous ramifications for money and commerce.

七世纪阿拉伯人征服强大的波斯帝国时，他们学会了印度数字，这……波斯人从更东方的语言中借用了表示一、十和百的数字。阿拉伯数学家也采用了这种神奇的计数方法。阿拉伯人称零为sifr或as-sifr，源自梵语shunya，意为“虚空”。在现代法语中，chiffre 的意思是“数字”。在希伯来语中，“零”是sifra。随着这种术语跨越文化和民族传播，阿拉伯语sifr在诺曼人的拉丁化语言中变成了zefirum，然后又变成了zefiro、zephyr和zefro，最终演变为现代英语中的“zero” ^。

When the Arabs conquered the great Persian Empire in the seventh century, they learned the Hindu numerals, which the Persians had borrowed from further east, representing one, tens, and hundreds. Arab mathematicians adopted this magical technology. The Arabs called zero sifr or as-sifr, derived from shunya in Sanskrit, meaning “the void.” In modern French, chiffre means “figure.” In Hebrew, “zero” is sifra. As this contagious terminology jumped cultures and nationalities, the Arabic sifr became zefirum in the Latinized language of the Normans, and then zefiro, zephyr, and zefro, eventually morphing into “zero” in modern English.²

阿拉伯学者们探索着零的各种可能性，在从巴格达到科尔多瓦等伟大的学术中心建立起学堂。这些知识中心同时也是商业中心，构成了一个遍布阿拉伯世界的交融的商业与文化体系。这片广袤的自由贸易区，骆驼商队跋涉于沙漠，船只连接着地中海和黎凡特沿海城市。香料、丝绸、盐和奴隶经由红海从印度换取细棉布和棉花，而马斯喀特的商人则负责运输这些货物。马斯喀特的椰枣和无花果也同样供不应求。商品从埃及运往热那亚，再到加洛林王朝的伟大城市阿维尼翁和马赛，人口、思想和金钱在地中海沿岸蜿蜒流动。

Arabic scholars played around with the possibilities of zero, setting up schools in their great centers of learning, from Baghdad to Córdoba. These intellectual hubs doubled up as commercial hubs of an overlapping system of commerce and culture that proliferated across the Arab world, a vast free-trade zone where camel caravans trekked across the desert and ships linked the Mediterranean to the coastal cities of the Levant. Spices, silks, salt, and slaves were exchanged for muslin and cotton from India via the Red Sea, shepherded by the traders of Muscat, whose dates and figs were also in huge demand. Goods were traded out of Egypt to Genoa and on to the great Carolingian cities of Avignon and Marseille, as people, ideas, and money zigzagged the Mediterranean.

我们知道零和数字是如何从印度人传到阿拉伯人的，但是，在十字军东征期间，当阿拉伯人和基督​​徒是死敌时，这种阿拉伯技术又是如何落入基督徒手中的呢？传播的媒介是诺曼西西里岛。

We know how zero and numerals jumped from the Indians to the Arabs, but how, during the Crusades, when the Arabs and the Christians were sworn enemies, did this Arabic technology get into the hands of Christians? The transmission mechanism was Norman Sicily.

为什么选择西西里岛？

Why Sicily?

犁的出现、北欧的富裕化以及人口的爆炸式增长，带来了一个令人惊讶且意想不到的结果。后果：十字军东征。如果没有犁耕带来的农业财富，十字军东征就无法获得资金，所有当地的乡绅也只能继续在他们称之为家的沼泽湿地里游荡。出乎意料的是，西西里岛并没有卷入这场破坏性的十字军东征。作为拜占庭希腊人、拉丁化的诺曼基督徒、阿拉伯穆斯林和塞法迪犹太人的家园，这座岛屿在十二世纪变得富裕而文明，这很大程度上得益于它拒绝参战。西西里岛究竟发生了什么，而其他地方却没有发生？

The arrival of the plow, the enrichment of northern Europe, and the explosion of its population had a surprising and unintended consequence: the Crusades. Without the surplus agricultural wealth associated with the plow, the Crusades couldn’t have been financed and all the local squires would have remained knocking around the marshy wetland they called home. Against all odds, Sicily did not become embroiled in the destructive Crusades. Home to Byzantine Greeks, Latinized Norman Christians, Arab Muslims, and Sephardic Jews, the island grew rich and sophisticated in the twelfth century, helped greatly by its refusal to go to war. What was going on in Sicily that was not going on elsewhere?

西西里岛地处欧洲与北非的交界处，地理位置优越，使其成为地中海贸易的中心。形形色色的人来来往往，使这座岛屿长期以来成为一个国际化都市，宗教和民族多样性得以蓬勃发展。一波又一波的移民涌入并定居于此。腓尼基人之后是希腊人，而西西里岛也成为罗马人和迦太基人之间布匿战争的关键战场。公元535年，拜占庭人占领了西西里岛，但大约在公元900年，他们又被北非穆斯林击败。这种冲突、占领与和平交替的模式，源于西西里岛重要^的地理地位及其带来的经济繁荣，造就了一个非同寻常的多元文化社会，而诺曼人则是西西里岛最出人意料的访客之一。

Its prime location, at the frontier between Europe and North Africa, made Sicily the epicenter of Mediterranean trade. With all sorts of people coming and going, the island had long been cosmopolitan, allowing religious and ethnic variety to flourish. Wave after wave came and settled. The Phoenicians were followed by the Greeks, and the island was a key battleground in the Punic Wars between the Romans and Carthaginians. Much later, by 535 CE, the Byzantines had taken it, only to be overcome by the North African Muslims around 900 CE.³ This pattern of conflict, occupation, and peace, arising from the island’s geographic significance and resultant economic prosperity, led to an unusually multicultural society, and among the more unexpected visitors to Sicily were the Normans.

诺曼雇佣兵在西西里岛的成功是十二世纪最令人瞠目结舌的地缘战略故事之一。1160年，一群在卡拉布里亚一带横行霸道的诺曼强盗应邀来到西西里岛，而邀请他们的是岛上两位相互竞争的阿拉伯埃米尔之一。为了丰厚的报酬，锡拉库萨和卡塔尼亚埃米尔伊本·图姆纳怂恿这群诺曼人，在一位名叫罗杰的人的带领下，进攻阿格里真托和卡斯特罗焦瓦尼埃米尔伊本·哈瓦斯。

The success of Norman mercenaries in Sicily is one of the more eye-popping geostrategic stories of the twelfth century. In 1160, a band of Norman tough guys who had been throwing their weight around Calabria were invited to Sicily by one of the two competing Arabic emirs on the island. For a fine purse, the Emir of Syracuse and Catania, Ibn Thumna, encouraged these Normans, under the leadership of a man named Roger, to attack Ibn al-Hawwàs, the Emir of Agrigento and Castrogiovanni.

当时，诺曼人在欧洲各地充当雇佣兵；这份颇受欢迎的副业让他们得以享受美酒佳肴、美色佳人以及马镫。1167年，在遥远的北方爱尔兰，绰号“强弓”（Strongbow）的强弓被当地一位盖尔族酋长“邀请”前来。由于氏族间的纷争，这位酋长召集了这些讲法语的硬汉为他效力。强弓的到来标志着英格兰对爱尔兰的第一次入侵——但并非最后一次。作为受雇的打手，强弓原本可能被期望拿了钱就走，但他和他的诺曼战士决定留在爱尔兰。他们从此再也没有离开。

Normans were vigilantes for hire across Europe at this time; this favored side hustle kept them in wine, goblets, fair maidens, and stirrups. In 1167, far to the north in Ireland, the aptly entitled Strongbow was “invited in” by a local Gaelic chieftain who, in a spot of interclan bother, called on these French-speaking hard men to do a job for him. Strongbow’s arrival constituted the first—but not last—invasion of Ireland from England. As hired muscle, Strongbow was probably expected to take his money and leave, but he and his Norman fighters decided to stay in Ireland. They never left.

诺曼人在西西里岛的经历，与在爱尔兰的情况类似，他们环顾四周，意识到这座岛屿的潜力，利用当地统治者的分裂，决定接管并殖民。西西里的诺曼人发现自己身处一个陌生的文化环境中，语言、习俗、氏族和亲缘关系都截然不同。他们没有与这种差异对抗，而是选择同化，最终融入当地社会并繁荣发展。在爱尔兰，讲法语的诺曼人融入得如此之好，以至于时至今日，人们仍然形容他们“比爱尔兰人更像爱尔兰人”。日常爱尔兰语中充斥着诺曼法语词汇，例如airgead，意为“钱”，源自argent；garsún，意为“男孩”，源自garçon；seomra，意为“房间”，源自chambre；以及eaglais，意为“教堂”，源自église。在西西里岛，这些前治安维持者找到了新的方向，避免在国外诉诸暴力，确保当东地中海陷入宗派暴行时，西西里岛走上了一条不同的道路。

The Normans in Sicily, as would be the case in Ireland, took a look around, understood the potential of the island, exploited the divided nature of the local rulers, and decided to take command and colonize. The Normans in Sicily found themselves in an alien culture, with different languages, customs, clans, and affinities. Rather than fight the diversity, they assimilated, managing to integrate and prosper. In Ireland, the French-speaking Normans fitted in so well that to this day they are described as becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves.” Everyday Irish language is peppered with Norman French words such as airgead, meaning “money,” from argent; garsún, meaning “boy,” from garçon; seomra, meaning “room,” from chambre; and eaglais, meaning “church,” from église. In Sicily, these former vigilantes navigated a new direction, eschewing violence abroad, making sure that when the eastern Mediterranean plunged itself into sectarian brutality, Sicily took a different path.

法国社会学家马塞尔·莫斯曾指出，为了进行贸易，人类首先必须放下长矛。这在西西里岛得到了印证，贸易往来缓和了岛上主要宗教和民族部落之间的冲突。事实上，跨文化贸易是西西里岛经济价值的内在组成部分。罗杰一世大伯爵，以及后来那些极具远见的……罗杰二世不仅热衷于贸易，也致力于知识的传播，尤其是在数学和零的引入方面，最终推行了印度-阿拉伯数字。与繁琐的旧罗马数字相比，印度-阿拉伯数字使得计数、乘法和除法变得更加便捷（不妨试着在不先转换成阿拉伯数字的情况下，直接心算 XXVIII 和 MXIV），这标志着西西里岛作为一个现代化的商业国家，与周围战乱不断的诸侯国形成了鲜明对比。

French sociologist Marcel Mauss once observed that in order to trade, humans first must put down the spear. This was true in Sicily, where the trading dynamic dampened conflicts between the main religious and ethnic tribes on the island. Indeed, cross-cultural trade was inherent to Sicily’s economic value. Grand Count Roger I, and later the notably farseeing Roger II, embraced not just trade but also the dissemination of knowledge, particularly mathematics and the adoption of zero, ultimately introducing Hindu-Arabic numerals. By making counting, multiplying, and dividing far easier than the old cumbersome Roman numerals (just try adding XXVIII and MXIV in your head without translating it into our numerals first), Hindu-Arabic numerals signified that Sicily was a modern commercial state, in contrast to the states at war all around it.

几个世纪后，凯末尔·阿塔图尔克也做了类似的事情。作为新成立的土耳其共和国总统，他放弃了他认为落后的奥斯曼帝国和哈里发王朝的阿拉伯字母，转而采用西方现代的拉丁字母，以此向世界展示一个崭新的、世俗的——因而也是现代的——土耳其。对阿塔图尔克而言，改变字母表象征着与日渐衰落的奥斯曼帝国决裂，这一举动既引人注目又切实可行。对于西西里岛的改革者诺曼人来说，引入阿拉伯数字同样具有强大的象征意义。阿拉伯数字代表着未来；而罗马世界及其简陋的数字系统则代表着古老。

Many centuries later, Kemal Atatürk would do something similar when, as president of the new Turkish Republic, he abandoned what he thought of as the backward Arabic script of the Ottomans and the Caliphate for the modern Latin script of the West to show the world the new secular—and thus modern—Turkey. For Atatürk, changing the alphabet constituted a highly visible and practical break from the fracturing old Ottoman Empire. For Sicily’s reforming Normans, the introduction of these numerals was an equally powerful signal. Arabic numerals constituted the future; the Roman world, with its unsophisticated numbering system, was ancient.

在西西里岛，基督徒和穆斯林因商业往来而走到了一起。穆斯林构成了商人阶层的主体，此外还有一小群充满活力的犹太社群和一些希腊拜占庭基督徒。大多数农民都是穆斯林。灌溉良好的牧场、富含养分的火山土壤，加上炎热的夏季和温和的冬季，使西西里岛成为农业的理想之地——一千年前，它曾被称为“罗马的粮仓”。小麦仍然是其主要出口商品，来自地中海各地的商人也在此交易盐、珊瑚、硫磺和铁。

In Sicily, Christians and Muslims came together through business. Muslims constituted most of the merchant class, along with a small but vibrant Jewish community and some Greek Byzantine Christians. Most farmers were Muslim. A combination of well-irrigated pastures and volcanic soil rich in nutrients, along with hot summers and mild winters, made Sicily perfect for agriculture—a thousand years earlier, it had been known as the “breadbasket of Rome.” Wheat was still its main export and merchants from all quarters of the Mediterranean also traded salt, coral, sulfur, and iron there.

很少有种族冲突会因为互利而加剧，而诺曼人明智地采取了一项政策，允许穆斯林社区享有相当大的自治权。他们还采纳了许多被认为经济高效的穆斯林习俗，例如征收基于穆斯林统治时期存在的吉兹亚税模式的税种，从而实现针对特定群体的征税。阿拉伯语（商业语言）而非诺曼法语（宫廷语言）仍然是官署（或称迪万）的官方语言。传统上，欧洲的诺曼人以圣徒的名字命名城镇，但西西里分支却选择将岛上的主要港口命名为墨西拿（Messina），取自阿拉伯语“麦地那”（Al-Medina），意为“城市”。岛上其他三个城市的名称则突显了它们不同的文化渊源：马尔萨拉（Marsala）源自希腊语“ mars al-Allah ”，意为“真主的港湾”；锡拉库萨（Syracuse）是科林斯沼泽地的希腊语名称，公元前400年，岛上的第一批希腊殖民者就来自那里；巴勒莫（Palermo）则源自希腊语“panormos ”，意为“避风港”。

Few ethnic rows are made worse by mutual profit and, astutely, the Normans had a policy of allowing Muslim communities to operate with a significant level of autonomy. They also adopted many Muslim customs that were deemed economically efficient, such as the imposition of a tax based on the jizya model that had existed under Muslim rule, allowing for group-targeted taxation. Arabic, the language of commerce, rather than Norman French, the language of the court, remained the official language of the chancery (or the diwan). Traditionally, Normans in Europe named their towns after saints, but this Sicilian branch instead chose to call the island’s main port Messina after Al-Medina, which itself is Arabic for “city,” and the names of its three other cities underscored their different cultural provenances: Marsala is mars al-Allah, “the harbor of Allah”; Syracuse is the Greek name for the marsh in Corinth that the island’s first Greek colonists came from in 400 BCE; and Palermo comes from the Greek panormos, meaning “sheltered harbor.”

诺曼人、阿拉伯人、犹太人和拜占庭人曾相对和谐地生活在一起。正如十二世纪西西里统治者罗杰二世所说，“ varietas populorum nostro regno subiectorum ”——“多样性是生活的调味品”。当世界其他地区，从英国到埃及，都在十字军东征中选边站队，杀戮、屠戮、破坏时，这片独特的多民族西西里大熔炉，各种思想、商品、金钱和人口相互交融、贸易往来。宽容的诺曼西西里在建筑、医学和科学领域经历了探索与创新的黄金时代，同时又秉持着金钱、市场和利润的通用语言。

Normans, Arabs, Jews, and Byzantines lived together in relative harmony. As Sicily’s twelfth-century ruler Roger II put it, “varietas populorum nostro regno subiectorum”—“variety is the spice of life.” While the rest of the world, from Britain to Egypt, was taking sides in the Crusades, killing, butchering, and destroying, this exceptional multiethnic Sicilian soup of ideas, goods, money, and people mixed and traded together. Tolerant Norman Sicily experienced a golden age of inquiry and innovation in architecture, medicine, and science while speaking the universal language of money, markets, and profit.

复数

Plurality

十二世纪末，西西里岛的海上贸易路线网络将波斯与诺曼底、摩洛哥柏柏尔人与君士坦丁堡希腊人、主教与伊玛目联系起来，东正教牧师与卡巴拉拉比。诺曼统治者、阿拉伯数学家、拜占庭商人、犹太天文学家和伦巴第银行家共同生活和贸易，用法语、拉丁语、阿拉伯语、希腊语、卡斯蒂利亚语和拉迪诺语等多种语言交换信息、知识和技术。

In the late twelfth century, Sicily’s maritime network of trading routes linked Persia with Normandy, Moroccan Berbers with Constantinople Greeks, bishops with imams, and Orthodox priests with Kabbalist rabbis. Norman overlords, Arabic mathematicians, Byzantine merchants, Jewish astronomers, and Lombardian bankers lived and traded together, swapping information, knowledge, and techniques in a myriad of tongues: French, Latin, Arabic, Greek, Castilian, and Ladino.

这种包容性在西西里人铸造的硬币上体现得淋漓尽致。一个国家的硬币不仅仅是记账单位，它更是这个国家信仰的象征。自从亚历山大大帝决定将自己的肖像印在硬币上以来，所有统治者都深谙硬币的象征意义。你觉得为什么古巴纸币上会印着切·格瓦拉的肖像？或者为什么旧版苏联十卢布纸币上的锤子镰刀旁边会印着列宁的肖像？

This inclusiveness is evident in the coins the Sicilians minted. A nation’s coin is more than a unit of account; it is a symbol of what the nation believes in. Since the day that Alexander the Great decided to put his image on his coins, the signaling power of the coin has been understood by all rulers. Why do you think Cuban notes are emblazoned with a picture of Che Guevara? Or that the old Soviet ten-ruble note had a picture of Lenin next to the hammer and sickle?

弗拉罗（follaro）是诺曼西西里岛的标准银币，象征着该岛多元文化的融合。银币一面刻有阿拉伯文铭文，标明了根据阿拉伯历法铸造的日期；另一面则刻有拉丁字母“基督”（Christ）的首尾字母。

The follaro, the standard minted silver coin of Norman Sicily, emblematized the island’s synthesis of cultures. On one side, an Arabic inscription denoted the date of minting according to the Arabic calendar, while on the other side was inscribed the first and last letters of “Christ” in the Latin alphabet.

1132年，罗杰二世委托建造了位于巴勒莫的宏伟的帕拉蒂尼礼拜堂，将岛上三大文明的精髓展现于世。在建筑风格上，拉丁诺曼人、希腊拜占庭人和穆斯林阿拉伯人各自发展出了独特的风格，而罗杰二世并没有拘泥于任何一种，而是将这三种风格融会贯通，打造出这座象征权力与信仰的堡垒。

In 1132, Roger II commissioned his magnificent Palatine Chapel in Palermo, putting the island’s three great civilizations on display. Architecturally, Latin Normans, Greek Byzantines, and the Muslim Arabs had evolved their individual styles, and rather than adhere to one, Roger incorporated all three in his citadel of power and faith.

由于伊斯兰教禁止一切形式的先知画像和偶像崇拜，再加上阿拉伯文化借鉴了波斯在精美地毯、花园、喷泉和豪华建筑方面的技艺，阿拉伯文化发展出一种繁复的、以图案为基础的装饰雕刻和设计风格，即阿拉伯式花纹。如果说阿拉伯人以他们的艺术成就为傲，那么他们也同样为阿拉伯文化的精髓而感到自豪。希腊拜占庭人偏爱低调内敛却又不失美感的阿拉伯风格，而拜占庭人则更喜欢张扬炫耀的奢华。拜占庭东正教教堂更是极尽奢华的象征。罗杰深谙这两种文化偏好，因此在巴勒莫建造的罗马式基督教大教堂中，他巧妙地融合了阿拉伯和拜占庭东正教的传统，将三者融为一体。教堂的天花板饰以精美的萨拉森风格木雕，纯粹的阿拉伯风格，而立柱则装饰着拜占庭金色马赛克的复制品。圣彼得小堂中希腊铭文的使用，也体现了整座教堂设计中象征意义的平衡，罗杰借此向他的阿拉伯和拜占庭臣民传达：他们不仅在西西里社会中占有一席之地，在最神圣的殿堂中也同样如此。

Due to the Islamic ban on images of the Prophet and idolatry in any form, and having borrowed Persian knowledge of fine rugs, gardens, water fountains, and sumptuous buildings, Arabic culture had cultivated an intricate, pattern-based style of decorative carving and design that became known as the Arabesque. If the Arabs prided themselves on the austere, understated, but beautiful Arabesque style, the Greek Byzantines preferred full-on, in-your-face bling. Byzantine Orthodox churches were altars to ostentatious displays of opulence. Understanding both of these cultural biases, Roger constructed his Roman Christian cathedral in Palermo with a nod to both the Arabic and Byzantine Orthodox traditions in an architectural synthesis of all three. With exquisite wood carving in Saracen design, the ceiling is pure Arabesque, while the pillars are adorned with replicas of Byzantine golden mosaics. The use of Greek inscriptions in the chapel of St. Peter is also indicative of the parity of symbols throughout the cathedral’s design, with Roger saying to his Arab and Byzantine subjects that they have a place not only in Sicilian society but in its most holy place too.

就连罗杰出席所有正式场合时所穿的礼服也象征着三种文化的融合与尊重。这位诺曼统治者身披一件饰有珍珠、珐琅饰片、蓝宝石和红宝石的金线刺绣丝绸披风。这件披风的布料产自拜占庭帝国，由西西里的穆斯林工匠刺绣而成。沿着缝线延伸的阿拉伯文铭文记载着这件披风于伊斯兰历528年（公元1133年）在巴勒莫制作，并列举了赐予国王的祝福和美德。试想一下，这位诺曼统治者，一位宗教骑士文明的领袖，身着一件彰显西西里社会多元性的中世纪高级时装，与他的罗马主教们一起，在他那融合了穆斯林和东正教元素的教堂里庆祝复活节。

Even the ceremonial robe that Roger would have worn for all official occasions signified that the three cultures were valued. The Norman overlord wore a mantle of gold embroidered silk set with pearls, enamel plaques, sapphires, and a ruby. The cloth was made in the Byzantine Empire and embroidered by Muslim craftsmen in Sicily. The Arabic inscription running along the seam tells us it was made in Palermo in the year 528 of the Islamic Hijri calendar (1133 CE) and lists the blessings and virtues bestowed on the king. Imagine the Norman ruler, the head of a civilization of religious knights, standing beside his Roman bishops celebrating Easter in his cathedral with its Muslim and Orthodox influences, wearing a piece of Middle Ages haute couture that emphasized the plurality of Sicilian society.

岛上拥有如此多的财富、精美的商品，以及和平与合作带来的种种好处，罗杰决定远离十字军东征也就不足为奇了。

With all the island’s wealth, its fine goods, and the benefits of both peace and cooperation, is it any wonder that Roger decided to give the Crusades a wide berth?

全球首部商业畅销书

The world’s first business bestseller

1202年，比萨的莱昂纳多——我们熟知的斐波那契——在贝贾亚的商人那里学习了多年的萨拉森魔法秘诀，并在墨西拿码头亲眼目睹了代数在商业运作中的应用之后，出版了那本将彻底改变欧洲商业的著作。 ⁴这本书名为《计算之书》 （Liber Abaci），斐波那契在书中阐述了代数原理，这些原理从本质上帮助商人赚钱。他拥有新闻工作者的天赋，能将奇异的事物变得司空见惯，将看似无关紧要的事情变得至关重要。通过列举商人面临的实际难题，斐波那契使数学鲜活起来。如果他用学院派的语言写作，这本书的影响力将会非常有限。但正因为他是为商人而写，斐波那契才展现了这位伟大教师的真正天才：他能够摆脱同侪的束缚。如果他试图说服那些博学的僧侣，他的著作就会被心怀怨恨的“专家”们挑剔得体无完肤，其可信度也会大打折扣。斐波那契效仿所有伟大的传播者，绕过了把关人，直接去找那些能从这项新技术中获益最多的人：商人。

In 1202, having spent years learning the secrets of Saracen magic from the traders of Bejaia and witnessing algebra in commercial action on the docks of Messina, Leonardo of Pisa—the man who we know as Fibonacci—published the book that would transform commerce in Europe.⁴ It was called Liber Abaci, the Book of Calculations, and in it Fibonacci set out algebraic principles that, essentially, enabled merchants to make money. He had the journalistic gift of making the strange seem commonplace and the tangential seem relevant. By posing real-life examples of conundrums faced by traders, Fibonacci brought maths to life. Had he written in the language of the academy, the book would have had limited relevance. But because he wrote it for the merchants, Fibonacci revealed the true genius of the great teacher: an ability to escape from the tyranny of his peer group. If he had tried to convince the scholarly monks, his work would have been picked apart by vindictive “experts” and its credibility undermined. Taking the route of all great communicators, Fibonacci sidestepped the gatekeepers and went straight to those who would get the most value from this new technology: the merchants.

《计算之书》（Liber Abaci）成为商人的必备参考书和国际贸易的必备工具。它堪称第一本畅销商业书籍。这本书既具有启发性又具有革命性，它解释了如何计算利率、如何规避教会的高利贷法、如何分配利润以及如何评估收入和成本。它为商人提供了一套方法，让他们能够用分数和通用货币来表示自己的产品，并将其与他人的产品进行比较。书中用了大量篇幅来解答有关利率、银行和高利贷的难题，这使得它颇具争议性：教会对此颇有微词。教会显然将其视为对其放贷业务垄断地位的挑战。将放贷者打入地狱是保护自身地盘的绝佳方式：诅咒还有一个额外的好处，那就是永远不会在法庭上受到挑战。在所有受欧洲小企业金融化威胁最大的群体中，总部位于罗马的教会——这个世界上规模最大、最成功、存续时间最长的跨国公司——确实有很多值得担忧的地方。

Liber Abaci became the go-to book for traders and an essential tool of international commerce. It could be regarded as the first bestselling business book. Revelatory as well as revolutionary, it explained how to calculate interest rates, how to circumvent the Church’s usury laws, apportion profits, and assess revenues and costs. It gave merchants a roadmap to express their produce in terms of someone else’s products, in fractions and in a common currency. The fact that the book devoted many pages to puzzles regarding interest rates, banks, and usury made it quite provocative: the Church looked unfavorably on it as a challenge to its monopoly on the moneylending business. Condemning moneylenders to hell is a pretty good way of protecting your turf: damnation has the added upside of never being challenged in court. Of all those most threatened by the financialization of European small business, the biggest, most successful, and longest-surviving multinational the world had ever seen, the Church, with its corporate headquarters in Rome, had a lot to be worried about.

斐波那契最重要的洞见之一与金钱和时间的关系有关。他阐明了经济学家所谓的货币时间价值，这可以理解为金融领域中“今日之蛋胜过明日之鸡”的等价物。这种认为今日之钱胜过明日之钱的承诺的理念，是所有借贷行为的基石。这就是我们所说的机会成本。如果我借钱给你，意味着你拥有了这笔钱，而我无法使用它，因此我付出了成本。在你还款后，我从你那里收回的钱必须扣除我放弃的机会成本。计算方法是将我从你那里收回的所有钱除以当时的利率。为什么要用利率呢？因为利率就是我把钱存起来所能获得的收益。现在我们都能凭直觉理解这一点，但在当时，赋予货币时间价值却是一项革命性的发现。它也使得商人和银行家能够区分他们被要求融资的各种项目。苏美尔人在数千年前就引入了利率的概念，但斐波那契用易于计算的代数公式阐述了货币的时间价值理论，使之更容易被大众理解。斐波那契的清晰阐述将这些理念带给了商人阶层和银行家阶层，并最终促成了二者的结合：商人银行家。

One of Fibonacci’s most consequential insights concerned the relationship between money and time. He teased out what economists call the time value of money, which is better understood as the financial equivalent of “it’s better to have an egg today than a chicken tomorrow.” This idea that money today is better than a promise of money tomorrow is what underpins all borrowing and lending. It’s what we call the opportunity cost. If I lend to you, it means that you have the money and I can’t use it, so there is a cost to me. The money I earn back from you after you pay me back must be adjusted for the opportunity that I have forgone. The way to calculate this is to divide all the money I get back from you by the prevailing interest rate. Why the interest rate? Because the interest rate is what I would have got by simply keeping my money on deposit. We all intuitively understand that now, but back then, giving money a value over time was revolutionary. It also allowed merchants and bankers to discriminate between various projects that they were being asked to finance. The Sumerians had introduced interest rates thousands of years prior, but Fibonacci made the time value of money more accessible by setting this theory out in algebraic terms that were easy to calculate. Fibonacci’s clarity brought these ideas to both the merchant class and the banking class. And it led, inexorably, to their combination: the merchant banker.

资产负债表

The balance sheet

佛罗伦萨的普奇宫建于十四世纪，从其屋顶可以饱览布鲁内莱斯基设计的教堂穹顶的壮丽景色。无论人们对佛罗伦萨的商业巨头们有何评价，他们都善于守财奴。宫殿的图书馆藏有大量档案，包括账簿、文件以及与世界各地商人、代理商和买家往来的信函。佛罗伦萨商人热衷于书信往来，而这些信件大多都以账簿为基础，账簿中包含着众多企业的资产负债表。资产负债表是新兴商人阶层的主要武器，而如果没有斐波那契对数字的推广，它或许根本不会出现。

The Pucci Palace in Florence, dating back to the fourteenth century, has extraordinary rooftop views of Brunelleschi’s cathedral dome. Whatever you say about the Florentine merchant princes, they were good at holding on to their brass. The palazzo’s library contains vast archives with ledgers, documents, and correspondence to and from merchants, agents, and buyers across the world. The Florentine merchant was a committed letter writer and underpinning most of these letters was the ledger, containing the balance sheets of a whole host of businesses. The balance sheet was the main weapon of the new class of merchants, and it would never have come about were it not for Fibonacci’s numerical evangelism.

在斐波那契之后约200年，僧侣卢卡·帕乔利（曾教过达·芬奇和丢勒数学）描述了“意大利式”的记账方法。这种复式记账法的核心在于，由商业银行家及其职员为家庭、公司和富裕人士编制一套借贷记账簿。每一笔借方都必须在资产负债表上对应一笔贷方，并且在所记录的会计期间结束时，这些账户必须平衡。一旦账目结算完毕，所有人都收到款项，这个过程就可以重新开始。显然，一丝不苟的复式记账法可以降低出错率，即使是在复杂的账目中也是如此。但更重要的是，一旦记账成为常态，普通人就会开始用记账的视角来看待世界。如今，我们经常会在国家新闻广播中听到“经常账户”这个词——更不用说公司、足球俱乐部或家庭的经常账户了。这种看待世界的方式，与任何其他方式都截然不同。此前的一切，都始于斐波那契将“撒拉逊魔法”引入欧洲。

Writing about 200 years after Fibonacci, the monk Luca Pacioli (who taught mathematics to both Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer) described the “Italian” approach to bookkeeping. This double-entry bookkeeping revolved around having a set of accounts, drawn up by merchant bankers and their clerks, for households, companies, and wealthy individuals, set out in debits and credits. Each debit had to have a corresponding credit on the balance sheet and at the end of whatever period they were measuring, these accounts had to balance. Once the accounts were settled and everyone was paid, the process could start again. Obviously, fastidious double-entry bookkeeping reduces the margin for error, even in complicated accounts, but more than that, once accounts become commonplace, ordinary people begin to think of the world in terms of accounts. Today, it is not unusual to hear national news broadcasts refer to the “current account” of the country—never mind a company, a football club, or a household. This way of looking at the world, which is unlike anything that went before, began with Fibonacci’s introduction of “saracen magic” to Europe.

《计算之书》（ Liber Abaci ）最深远的影响或许在于其兼具理论性和实用性：它促使越来越多的人转向理性、量化的探究。量化数学的核心在于精确性。账簿是理性结论的基础。正如人们常说的：数字不会说谎。旧世界充斥着臆测、奇迹和猜测。斐波那契的新世界建立在客观、可量化的价值和经验主义之上——这是一个新颖而根本的概念。人类思维的精确推理能力是我们理解周围世界的一项伟大突破。数学是让我们从模糊走向精确、从虚无缥缈的猜测走向确切事实的技术。斐波那契改变了我们学习、教学和计算的方式。封建经济正在让位于另一个时代：货币时代。

Possibly Liber Abaci’s most profound ramification was as intellectual as it was practical: it nudged more and more people toward reasoned, quantitative inquiry. At the core of quantifiable mathematics is the notion of precision. The ledger is the foundation of reasoned conclusion. As they say: the numbers don’t lie. The old world was one of conjecture, miracles, and guesswork. Fibonacci’s new world rested on objective, quantifiable value and empiricism—a novel and fundamental concept. The human mind’s capacity to reason with precision is one of the great breakthroughs in our comprehension of the world around us. Mathematics is the technology that allows us to move from the vague to the meticulous, from nebulous guesswork to exact fact. Fibonacci changed how we learned, taught, and calculated. The feudal economy was giving way to another age: the Age of Money.

敬畏上帝的佛罗伦萨人最初禁止使用阿拉伯数字，但压制很少奏效，尤其是在一项新技术激发人们想象力的情况下。强大的技术是无法阻挡的。更重要的是，能够帮助人们赚钱的强大技术更是无法阻挡。到了十三世纪末，佛罗伦萨人意识到自己的愚蠢，作为商业参与者，他们通过专门的商学院将零引入了世界。到1350年，印度-阿拉伯数学已经非常流行，佛罗伦萨城内就有超过一千名学生就读于专门的“计算学校”。这些计算学校，相当于十四世纪的哈佛MBA，以斐波那契的变革性数学为基础。正如世界各地的MBA课程催生了一个管理阶层——企业界的基层员工——计算学校也培养出了他们自己的管理人才。商业阶层。佛罗伦萨这些学校的著名学生包括尼科洛·马基雅维利和列奥纳多·达·芬奇。就连但丁·阿利吉耶里——这位对佛罗伦萨银行家奢靡之风深恶痛绝的批评者——也把他的儿子送到这样的学校学习商业的“黑暗艺术”。

God-fearing Florentines initially banned Arabic numerals, but suppression rarely works, particularly if a new technology is capturing people’s imaginations. It is impossible to stop a powerful technology. Even more critically, it is impossible to stop a powerful technology that enables people to make money. By the end of the thirteenth century the Florentines realized their folly and, as commercial players, introduced zero to their world through special business schools. By 1350, Hindu-Arabic mathematics was so popular that over a thousand pupils within the walls of Florence were attending special “reckoning schools.” These reckoning schools, the Harvard MBAs of the fourteenth century, were based on the transformative mathematics of Fibonacci. Just as MBAs worldwide have spawned a managerial caste—the foot soldiers of the corporate world—the reckoning schools produced their own commercial caste. Notable pupils of these Florentine schools were Niccolò Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci. Even Dante Alighieri, great critic of the bankers’ excess in Florence, sent his son to such a school to learn the dark arts of commerce.

拥有数字、资产负债表和数学知识是一回事，但为了充分利用这些创新，佛罗伦萨人发展出一种他们信赖的稳定货币，一种能够给予商人信心和安全感的货币。一种新型货币正经由佛罗伦萨进入世界。而佛罗伦萨最著名的儿子但丁，在他的《神曲·地狱篇》中，为那些滥用这种货币的人留出了特殊的一席之地。

Having numbers, balance sheets, and mathematics was one thing, but to get the best use of these innovations, the Florentines developed a stable currency they could believe in, one that would give merchants confidence and security. A new sort of money was entering the world via Florence. And Dante, Florence’s most famous son, saved a special place in his Inferno for those who abused it.

神曲

Divine comedy

《神曲》深受谢默斯·希尼、塞缪尔·贝克特和詹姆斯·乔伊斯等人的喜爱，也被许多人视为欧洲文学的巅峰之作。奥斯卡·王尔德曾索要一本《神曲》的第一部分—— 《地狱篇》，以便在他身处的炼狱——雷丁监狱中反复研读。普里莫·莱维和许多意大利人一样，对《神曲》的大部分内容都了如指掌。在他的回忆录《如果这就是一个人》中，莱维以奥斯维辛集中营的炼狱为背景，讲述了他如何努力回忆《神曲》的台词，以证明即使在纳粹企图扼杀艺术和文明的浪潮中，它们依然存在。

Beloved of Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce, The Divine Comedy is regarded by many as the finest work of European literature. Oscar Wilde asked for a copy of the Inferno, the first part of the Comedy, to ruminate on in his own personal inferno, Reading Gaol. Primo Levi, like many Italians, knew much of the Comedy by heart and in his memoir If This Is a Man, set in the living hell of Auschwitz, Levi recounts trying to recall its lines to prove that art and civilization lived on even amid the Nazi attempt to snuff out both.

但丁生于1265年，是中世纪佛罗伦萨之子。在他创作其杰作之时，这座城市已与日俱增，成为一座熠熠生辉的城堡。^但丁的《神曲》 ——大约在1308年至1321年间，在他流亡期间写成——描绘了从哥特式的黑暗到文艺复兴前光明的演变历程。他亲历了经济的飞速发展、巨大的政治动荡和社会变革。但丁时代的佛罗伦萨是一场实验，一座自信满满的大都市，一个由受过教育的平民和商人管理的自治城邦。行会利用梵蒂冈和神圣罗马帝国这两个欧洲大陆强权之间的矛盾，使它们相互对抗。一方是罗马，一个由教士统治、等级森严的垂直社会，教皇是其最高统治者。另一方是神圣罗马帝国皇帝，查理曼大帝的后裔，统治着从意大利到德国的广袤领土。夹在这两个超级大国之间——一个拥有枪炮，另一个拥有上帝——是勇敢的小共和国佛罗伦萨，它唯一的武器就是一个承诺。这是一场冒险。佛罗伦萨虽然可能被这两个强权的联合力量摧毁，但它却拥有一张王牌：它代表着一种理念。这种理念是基于一种新的政府形式实现社会向上流动的可能性，而这种个人转变的承诺极具诱惑力。

Born in 1265, Dante was a son of medieval Florence, a city quite different to the shining citadel that had emerged by the time he wrote his masterpiece.¹ Dante’s Divine Comedy—written in political exile between, roughly, 1308 and 1321—maps a progression from Gothic darkness to pre-Renaissance light. He had lived through breakneck economic growth, enormous political upheaval, and disruptive social change. Dante’s Florence was an experiment, a cocksure metropolis, a self-governing city-republic run by educated laymen and mercantile guilds, playing the two continental power bases, the Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire, against each other. In one corner was Rome, a strict vertical hierarchy run by clerics, under the pope. In the other, the Holy Roman Emperor, descendant of Charlemagne, ruler of vast territories from Italy to Germany. In the middle, between these two superpowers—one armed with guns, the other with God—lay the plucky little Republic of Florence, armed only with a promise. Risky business. While Florence could be crushed by the combined might of both powers, it had a trump card: it embodied an idea. That idea was the possibility of upward social mobility based on a new form of government, and this promise of individual transformation was seductive.

从1250年到1300年，佛罗伦萨的人口从约2万人增长到10万人。 ²佛罗伦萨著名编年史家乔瓦尼·维拉尼记载，到1338年，佛罗伦萨拥有600名公证人、146名面包师、100名药剂师、60名外科医生、30家医院、80家银行和放贷机构，以及1万名小学生。 ³佛罗伦萨人将他们拥有宏伟公共空间、艺术、建筑和宫殿的城市称为“新雅典”。佛罗伦萨从一个小小的省会城镇转变为薄伽丘之城，后来又成为布鲁内莱斯基、达·芬奇和伽利略的故乡——文艺复兴的摇篮，以及非凡的艺术、思想和政治活力的中心——这一转变是由一段时期强劲的金融和市政创新所铸就的。佛罗伦萨堪称典范之城，集商业、学术、美学和民主形式于一体，是早期商业城市之一。与那些以头衔、骑士或封建领主统治、依靠君权神授或贵族特权的城市不同，佛罗伦萨的组织结构以金钱为导向。

From 1250 to 1300, the population of Florence grew from around 20,000 to 100,000.² Giovanni Villani, the famous chronicler of the city, notes that by 1338, Florence hosted 600 notaries, 146 bakers, 100 apothecaries, 60 surgeons, 30 hospitals, 80 banking houses and firms of moneylenders, and 10,000 children in elementary schools.³ The Florentines would call their city, with its magnificent public spaces, art, architecture, and palaces, the New Athens. The transformation of Florence from a small provincial town to the city of Boccaccio, and later Brunelleschi, Leonardo, and Galileo—the cradle of the Renaissance and the fulcrum of extraordinary artistic, intellectual, and political dynamism—was forged by a period of intense financial and civic innovation. A model state, a center of commerce, learning, beauty, and a form of democracy, Florence was a merchant city, among the first of its kind. Rather than being organized around titles, knights, or feudal overlords ruling by divine right or aristocratic privilege, Florence was organized by money.

在这个宇宙的中心，是弗罗林——他们的金币。梵蒂冈拥有圣经，皇帝拥有军团，而新雅典则拥有货币。货币的出现改变了欧洲城市文明的发展方式。这种城邦与当时盛行的由贵族、教会和武士骑士统治的封建模式截然不同，这一点怎么强调都不为过。与中世纪那种以农业为主的城邦模式形成鲜明对比的是，佛罗伦萨发展成为一种资产阶级民主政体，由选举产生的商人行会及其金融家——那些周游世界、从伦敦到开罗进行贸易的商人银行家——管理。薄伽丘在黑死病之后创作的《十日谈》中描绘的众多故事，充分展现了他们庞大的贸易网络​​和民众的普遍世界主义精神。到了14世纪40年代，书中的人物已经从贝鲁特到西班牙，从巴黎到亚历山大港，足迹遍布各地。

At the center of this universe was the florin, their gold coin. While the Vatican had scripture and the emperor had legions, the New Athens had money. And with money, it would change the way European urban civilization developed. It is difficult to overstate how different such a city-state was from the prevailing mode of feudal rule by aristocrats, the Church, and warrior knights. In contrast to that form of medieval and overwhelmingly agrarian state, Florence evolved as a sort of bourgeois democracy, run by elected guilds of merchants and their financiers, the merchant bankers who traveled and traded around the globe from London to Cairo. The extent of their trade networks and the casual cosmopolitanism of the people is evidenced by the wide-ranging stories in Boccaccio’s post–Black Death Decameron, whose characters, by the 1340s, were traveling from Beirut to Spain and Paris to Alexandria.

十四世纪的意大利是欧洲的贸易中心，是东西方之间的天然中转站，而佛罗伦萨正迅速成为其商业、金融和文化中心。

Italy in the fourteenth century was the trade nexus of Europe, the natural stop-off point between east and west, and Florence was fast becoming its commercial, financial, and intellectual epicenter.

西欧正处于前所未有的全球化早期阶段，这是一个巨大的开放时期，商人阶层作为崛起的冒险家应运而生。当时的全球化，如同今日一样，是一种城市现象，城市而非乡村才是贸易繁荣的中心。从经济角度来看，城市创造了“附加值”。商人从农民手中收购羊毛，加工成各种产品，然后以更高的价格卖给最终消费者——他们创造了附加值。作为早期社会改革者，这些市民资产阶级建造了孤儿院、医院、学校和污水处理系统。这些在十三世纪末改造佛罗伦萨的社会革命者，旨在推翻旧秩序——而金钱正是他们的武器。

Western Europe was in the grip of an early stage of unprecedented globalization, a great opening, with a merchant class emerging as its ascendant adventurers. Globalization then, as today, was an urban phenomenon and the cities, rather than the countryside, flourished with trade. In economic terms, cities create “value added.” Merchants bought wool from peasants, fashioned products, and then sold on to the final consumer at a higher price—they added value. Early social reformers, this civic bourgeoisie built orphanages, hospitals, schools, and sewage systems. These social revolutionaries, who transformed Florence in the late thirteenth century, aimed to upset the old order—and money was their weapon.

佛罗伦萨行会

The Florentine guilds

尽管听起来可能枯燥乏味，缺乏英雄气概，但佛罗伦萨的商人不仅是技艺精湛的工匠和企业家，更是精明的管理者，深谙如何最大限度地利用资源。到了十二世纪末，他们将各个行业组织成行会——这是一种全新的商业模式。佛罗伦萨的制造业以集体形式运作，形成一个互助互惠的社群。行会促进了战略性的商业思考：商人可以汇集资源，互相借用机器，集体谈判，互相融资，并通过批量采购降低投入成本。他们还可以共同创新，秉持着“集思广益”的原则。

Although it may sound dull and unheroic, as well as being skilled artisans and entrepreneurs, Florentine merchants were adroit managers, understanding how to get the most out of their resources. By the late twelfth century, they were organizing each trade in a guild—an entirely new way of running business. Florentine manufacturing operated as a collective, a mutually supportive community. Guilds facilitated strategic commercial thinking: merchants could pool resources, lend each other machinery, negotiate as a bloc, finance each other, and reduce costs of inputs by bulk buying. They could also innovate together, operating on the “two heads is better than one” principle.

行会是中世纪的创业孵化器，让工匠们能够进行实验并分享信息。例如，在十二世纪末，一位佛罗伦萨的玻璃工匠——很可能是一位玻璃吹制工——意识到他工作中制作出的奇特形状的玻璃可以用来改善他日渐衰弱的视力。多年来，人们都知道凸面玻璃可以放大视力。然而，没有人发明过鼻梁架，也就是利用人的鼻子和两个小金属臂作为稳定器，并借助耳朵来保持平衡的部件。现在看来这似乎很简单，但当时必须有人提出这个想法，然后反复改进原型，确保眼镜能够牢固地佩戴。凭借这些简易的眼镜，佛罗伦萨人创造了一种解放双手的技术，通过改善视力，极大地延长了工匠们的工作时间。这看起来或许是一件小事，但即使一位技艺精湛的工匠在视力逐渐衰退后仍然能够继续工作，也能显著提高生产力；而让数百名工匠继续工作，则会带来变革性的影响。即使是规模很小的创新，通过合作行会大规模组织起来，也对城市的生产力产生了巨大的影响。行会的合作性质放大了任何发明的影响力。可以说，行会帮助将发明转化为创新——创新是将发明商业化应用^。4

Guilds were medieval start-up incubators, allowing artisans to experiment and share information. For example, in the late twelfth century, a Florentine artisan working with glass—most likely a glassblower—realized that the weird shapes of glass that his work was producing could be used to improve his ailing sight. For years, people had known that convex-shaped glass could magnify their sight. However, no one had invented the bridge component, using the human nose and two little metal arms as stabilizers, and enlisting the ears for balance. It seems so easy now, but someone had to come up with the idea and then tinker around with a prototype, making sure the glasses could stay on. With these rudimentary glasses, the Florentines created a hands-free technology that would dramatically increase an artisan’s working life through better sight. This might seem like a small thing, but the kick to productivity by keeping just one master craftsman active well after his natural sight had deteriorated was consequential, while keeping hundreds of them at work was transformative. Even small innovations, organized at scale via collaborative guilds, mattered enormously to the productivity of the city. The cooperative nature of the guilds amplified the impact of any invention. You could say that the guilds helped to turn invention into innovation—innovation being the commercial application of invention.⁴

在短短五十年间，佛罗伦萨繁荣赖以维系的主要机构相继建立。1190年，七大行会（Arti Maggiori） ——即法官和公证人行会、银行家和国际贸易商行会、货币兑换商行会、丝绸商行会、医生和药剂师行会、羊毛商行会以及皮毛商行会——相继成立。医生和药剂师行会的早期成员是美第奇家族，“美第奇”（Medici）一词源于拉丁语，意为“医学”。到了1200年，佛罗伦萨银行家联盟成立，并与伦敦的银行家建立了联系；伦敦金融城的伦巴第街正是以中世纪伦巴第地区的意大利银行家命名的，他们曾向金融知识相对匮乏的英国人提供贷款。1218年，第一个典当行会成立，这便是后来大型银行家族的雏形。十四世纪，典当行以抵押换取现金的模式彻底改变了佛罗伦萨的银行业。1233年，佛罗伦萨进行了首次商人普查，强制所有居民登记其职业或行业以及所属行会。行会选举产生掌权者（“podestà”），由其管理城市。

Within a brief period of about fifty years, we see the establishment of the major institutions on which Florentine prosperity would rest. In 1190, the Seven Great Guilds, or Arti Maggiori—for judges and notaries, bankers and international traders, money changers, silk merchants, doctors and apothecaries, wool merchants, and dealers in furs—were established. Early members of the guild of doctors and apothecaries were the Medici family, “Medici” stemming from the Latin for “medicine.” By 1200, the League of Florentine Bankers emerged, who would link up with bankers in London; Lombard Street in the City of London is named after the medieval Italian bankers from Lombardy who lent to the less financially sophisticated English. In 1218, the first guild of pawnshop owners, forerunners to the great banking families, was set up. The pawnbroking method of taking in collateral for cash revolutionized Florentine banking in the fourteenth century. In 1233, we have the first merchant census that compelled every inhabitant to register their profession or occupation and affiliation to a guild. The guilds elected the podestà (the “power”) who would run the city.

一枚金币

A golden coin

1252年，大量黄金涌入佛罗伦萨蓬勃发展的纺织业，佛罗伦萨的商人们决定进行创新。在财政方面，他们汇集资源铸造了自己的货币——25K金弗罗林。弗罗林的设计一面是佛罗伦萨的守护圣人施洗者约翰的肖像，另一面是佛罗伦萨的象征——百合花，这象征着城市与宗教同等重要。在经济上，弗罗林成为佛罗伦萨权力、商业实力和声誉的象征——一种由共和国财富支撑的可靠货币，值得欧洲信赖。正如我们将看到的，随着时间的推移，这种信誉最终使弗罗林成为欧洲的储备货币。

In 1252, awash with gold flowing into the city’s thriving textile industry, the Florentine merchants decided to innovate financially, pooling their resources to mint their own currency, the 25-carat gold florin. The florin’s design, with John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, on one side and a lily, the emblem of Florence, on the other, signified that the city and religion were equally important. Financially, the florin became the symbol of Florentine power, mercantile might, and reputation—a credible coin backed by the wealth of the republic, which Europe could trust. In time, as we will see, this credibility resulted in the florin becoming Europe’s reserve currency.

佛罗伦萨人将日常使用的货币与用于国际贸易或长途贸易的货币明确区分开来。金弗罗林用于长途或批发贸易，而银币“ moneta di piccoli” （小额货币）则用于本地零售或小额贸易，顾名思义。这两种货币体系截然不同，汇率波动，佛罗伦萨对其进行了精心管理，热那亚和威尼斯的类似地方货币体系也是如此。

The Florentines made a clear distinction between money they used every day within the city and money they used internationally or for long-distance trade. While the gold florin was for long-distance or wholesale trade, they also minted a silver moneta di piccoli for local retail trade, or small trade, as the name suggests. These were two completely different currency systems, with a fluctuating rate of exchange that was carefully managed in Florence, as with similar local systems in Genoa and Venice.

大约从1275年起，佛罗伦萨蓬勃发展。许多现代游客耳熟能详的建筑杰作，即便未完全建成，也是在13世纪末至1348年黑死病爆发这段令人叹为观止的商业繁荣时期规划或完成的。在瘟疫爆发前的这段时期，圣母百花大教堂（1296年）、圣十字教堂（1294年）、圣卡尔米内教堂（1268年）和圣玛利亚诺维拉教堂（1279年）相继动工，乔托钟楼（1334年）和旧宫（1298年）也相继建成。如今，旧宫内收藏着众多文艺复兴时期的绘画和雕塑作品，尼科洛·马基雅维利也曾在此担任共和国秘书长。

From around 1275 onward, Florence boomed. Many of the architectural masterpieces modern visitors associate with the city were planned, if not completed, during a mesmerizing period of commercial energy that lasted from the late thirteenth century until the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. In this period before the plague, work began on the churches of Santa Maria del Fiore (1296), Santa Croce (1294), Santa Carmine (1268), and Santa Maria Novella (1279), as well as Giotto’s Campanile (1334) and the Palazzo Vecchio (1298), which today hosts many Renaissance paintings and sculptures, and from where Niccolò Machiavelli would preside as secretary of the republic.

佛罗伦萨决心以其辉煌挑战罗马，但佛罗伦萨佛罗伦萨的建筑体现了民主精神。它的建筑由具有公民意识的商人为民众建造，这些城市长者致力于创造美丽的公共空间，而非私人空间。与欧洲那些囤积财富的王室王朝或教会红衣主教不同，佛罗伦萨的行会和商贾巨贾慷慨解囊，竞相将他们的城市建设得“尽善尽美”（ la più bella che si può）。例如，最富有的羊毛行会资助了许多项目，包括圣母百花大教堂。这种对美丽城市的追求意味着避免私人炫富，因此制定了法律来限制塔楼的高度。在托斯卡纳的其他城市，例如锡耶纳和圣吉米尼亚诺，富裕的家族通过在城墙内建造高塔来炫耀财富。更具民主精神的佛罗伦萨人禁止了这种做法，而是选择宫殿更为统一的高度，赋予街道古典的统一感和中央规划的权力。即使是最富有的商人也住在“店铺楼上”。佛罗伦萨的城市规划强化了其资产阶级抱负：赞助和财富并存，并以对货币的信心为支撑。

Florence set out to defy Rome with its splendor, but Florentine architecture was democratic. Its buildings were built by civic-minded merchants for the people, and these city elders aimed to create beautiful public, rather than private, spaces. Unlike princely European dynasties or the cardinals of the Church, who hoarded their wealth, Florence’s guilds and merchant princes spread their largesse, competing to make their city “la più bella che si può”—as beautiful as possible. The richest wool guild, for example, funded many projects, including Santa Maria del Fiore. This desire for a beautiful city meant avoiding private expressions of wealth, and laws were enacted to limit the height of towers. In other Tuscan cities, such as Siena and San Gimignano, rich families flaunted their wealth by building high towers within the city walls. The more democratic Florentines banned these, opting for the more uniform height of palaces, giving their streets a classic uniformity and a sense of central planning power. Even the wealthiest merchants lived “over the shop.” Florence’s urban planning reinforced its bourgeois aspirations: patronage and wealth went side by side, underpinned by confidence in the currency.

亚当的罪

Adam’s sin

与这新兴的秩序井然、民主优美的城市景观形成鲜明对比的是，但丁青年时代的佛罗伦萨却是一片混乱不堪——昏暗肮脏的街道纵横交错，人们摩肩接踵地生活在一起。鞋匠、马鞍匠、裁缝、金匠和理发师在街头揽客，街道既是店铺，又是工厂，还是屠宰场。这里弥漫着血腥味、牲畜的腥臭味、粪便的腥臭味、鱼腥味，以及制革厂散发出的恶臭。染工们在河流和运河中洗涤布料，只有在葡萄采摘季，所有淡水都用来酿酒时才会停止。镇上的公告员大声宣扬着出生、死亡、婚礼、通奸、破产以及其他从意大利以外地区归来的商人那里收集到的消息。妓女和小偷被赤身裸体地拖过街道鞭打，异教徒因亵渎神灵而被绑在火刑柱上烧死，小偷则因盗窃钱财而被处以火刑。

In contrast to this newly emerging cityscape of ordered, democratic beauty, the Florence of Dante’s youth was a frenzied place—a warren of dark, dirty streets where people lived cheek by jowl. The cobbler, saddler, tailor, goldsmith, and barber plied their trade on the street, which served as shop, factory, and slaughterhouse. The place reeked of blood, live beasts, human excrement, fish, and a foul stench from the tanneries. In the rivers and canals, dyers washed their cloth, except during the vine harvest when all fresh water was reserved for wine. The town crier roared news of births, deaths, weddings, adulteries, bankruptcies, and other news gleaned from returning merchants whose networks lay beyond Italy. Prostitutes and thieves were dragged naked through the streets and flogged, while heretics burned at the stake for crimes against God, and thieves sizzled for crimes against money.

年轻的但丁漫步于这些小巷，目睹了司空见惯的残酷景象。惩罚早已融入社会肌理——罪人必须公开受刑，宽恕极为罕见，任何轻蔑和侮辱都会招致惩罚，有时甚至包括死刑。孩提时代的他或许闻到过烧焦的肉块的气味，听到过行刑时痛苦的哀嚎。这些景象深深地印在了但丁的脑海中，并成为他《地狱篇》中对各种罪人施加酷刑的基石，也正是这部作品赋予了我们的文化对地狱的认知和对地狱酷刑的描绘。

The young Dante walking around these alleyways would have witnessed daily scenes of casual cruelty. Punishment was stitched into the fabric of society—sinners must suffer publicly, forgiveness was uncommon, and slights and insults were met with justice, which sometimes included death. As a child, he would have smelled burning flesh and heard the agonized cries as these sentences were carried out. Such images stayed with Dante and would form the bedrock of the abominations meted out to the various sinners in his Inferno, which has given our culture its ideas of hell and the visualization of its torments.

但丁为伪造罪保留了最残酷的惩罚之一。在《地狱篇》第三十歌中，伪造者阿达莫被判处地狱第八层，仅比第九层的路西法高一层。在这一歌中，但丁和他的向导维吉尔在冥界遇到了两个伪造者，其中一位就是不幸的阿达莫大师，他是一位真实存在的伪造者，在但丁年轻时曾试图贬低佛罗伦萨弗罗林币。

Dante reserved one of his most ghastly punishments for the crime of forgery. In Canto 30 of the Inferno, the counterfeiter Adamo is condemned to the eighth circle of hell, just one above Lucifer in the ninth. In this Canto, Dante and Virgil, his guide through the underworld, meet two falsifiers, one of whom is the unfortunate Maestro Adamo, a real-life counterfeiter who in Dante’s youth had tried to debase the Florentine florin.

亚当是英国人，曾在与佛罗伦萨竞争的布雷西亚求学。他受布雷西亚富裕商人的蛊惑，伪造了弗罗林金币，用铜代替了通常纯金中的三克拉。伪造的金币重量几乎相同，但却是假币。但丁将亚当与另一位骗子——希腊人西农相提并论。西农欺骗特洛伊人，让他们相信特洛伊木马是无辜的礼物。这场背叛最终导致了整个文明的毁灭。但丁为何将亚当——一个平凡的、投机取巧的伪造者——与西蒙——那个背叛特洛伊的人相提并论？这似乎有失偏颇，但只有当我们未能理解弗罗林币在支撑佛罗伦萨强大实力中所起的核心作用时，才会产生这种误解。

Adam—who was English—had studied in Brescia, a city in competition with Florence. He was persuaded by prosperous Brescian merchants to debase the florin by replacing three carats of the usually pure gold coin with copper. The coin weighed almost the same, but it was a fake. Dante pairs Adam with another liar, Sinon the Greek, the man who tricked the Trojans into believing the Trojan horse was an innocent gift. This betrayal led to the destruction of an entire civilization. Why would Dante equate Adam, an everyday, opportunistic counterfeiter, with Simon, the man who betrayed Troy? It seems disproportionate, but only if we fail to appreciate the central role of the florin in underpinning the might of Florence.

一弗罗林相当于今天的125欧元（142美元）。为了让您更直观地了解当时的货币价值，五十弗罗林可以买到一个女奴或一头骡子——约合6000欧元（6815美元）。⁵^我们知道，随着佛罗伦萨的商业版图在欧洲扩张，弗罗林不仅成为一种交换媒介，也成为了这座城市实力的象征。纯金弗罗林重3.53克，它成为了欧洲商业的储备货币，在国际金融领域占据了举足轻重的地位，与今天的美元颇为相似。在整个欧洲大陆，商品以弗罗林进行交换，债务以弗罗林结算，贷款以弗罗林发放，财富的计量和储存也都以弗罗林为准。匈牙利货币至今仍被称为弗罗林（或福林），荷兰盾也曾被称为弗罗林——事实上，荷兰盾的简写符号就是字母“f”。如今，荷兰海外领地阿鲁巴使用阿鲁巴弗罗林作为货币。

One florin was worth about €125 ($142) in today’s money, and to give you a sense of what that meant at the time, a slave girl or a mule could be bought for fifty florins—about €6,000 ($6,815).⁵ We know that, as the Florentines expanded commercially throughout Europe, the florin became the trademark of the strength of the city as much as a medium of exchange. Pure gold, weighing 3.53 grams, it became the reserve currency of mercantile Europe, giving it the preeminent role in international finance, not unlike the US dollar today. Across the continent, goods were exchanged in florins, debts were settled in florins, loans were extended in florins, and wealth was both measured and stored in florins. The Hungarian currency is still called the florin (or forint) and the Dutch guilder used to be called the same—in fact, the shorthand symbol for the guilder was an “f.” Today, the Dutch overseas territory of Aruba uses the Aruba florin as its currency.

弗罗林迅速成为欧洲最硬通货。这意味着从北部的伦敦和布鲁日到南部的亚历山大和提尔，它都被广泛接受为记账单位。当世界欣然接受你的货币时，它就拥有了最难能可贵的特质：流动性。流动性的简单定义是：以某种货币结算交易的便捷程度和所需时间。流动性越强，交易就越容易。就硬币而言，如果支撑该硬币的产品需求量很大，那么硬币的供应量就会增加，虽然其价值保持不变，但其内在的实用性以及实际价值却会增加。

The florin quickly became the hardest currency in Europe. That means it was accepted widely as the unit of account from London and Bruges in the north to Alexandria and Tyre in the south. When the world accepts your currency readily it gives the currency that most elusive of qualities: liquidity. A simple definition of liquidity is the ease and time it takes to settle a trade in a currency. The more liquidity, the easier it is to trade. If, in the case of a coin, there is significant demand for the products underpinning the coin, the number of coins supplied will go up and, while their value will stay the same, their intrinsic usability and therefore practical value increases.

以佛罗伦萨为例，这种货币所代表的产品是纺织品。据维拉尼估计，在黑死病爆发前十年，即1338年，佛罗伦萨10万居民中，有3万人从事染色和服装行业，分布在200家羊毛作坊。当时，佛罗伦萨从^英国、西班牙和法国进口羊毛，加工成高档奢侈品纺织品后再出口，而银行系统则将利润进行再投资。

In Florence’s case, the products underpinning the coin were textiles. By 1338, ten years before the Black Death arrived, Villani estimated that of its 100,000 inhabitants, 30,000 were working in the dyeing and clothing trades, across 200 wool workshops.⁶ English, Spanish, and French wool was imported to be processed into luxury high-end textiles for reexport, and the profits were reinvested by the banking system.

鉴于其流动性，人人都想用弗罗林结算账目。铸造人人都想要的货币的国家拥有软实力。软实力就是说服力。在当今语境下，想想美元赋予美国的实力。石油、铜、钢铁、铀、稀土、木材、棉花、丝绸、钻石——所有这些商品都以美元进行国际定价，而购买者必须先购买美元，这些美元是美国免费创造的。弗罗林在中世纪经济中也扮演着同样的角色，为发行国佛罗伦萨带来了巨大的经济优势。

Given its liquidity, everyone wanted to settle their accounts with the florin. The state that mints the coins that everyone wants has soft power. Soft power is the power of persuasion. In today’s context, consider the power the US dollar gives the United States. Oil, copper, steel, uranium, rare earths, timber, cotton, silk, diamonds—all these commodities are priced internationally in dollars, and to buy them the purchaser must first buy dollars, which the US generates for free. The florin played the same role in the medieval economy, bestowing significant financial advantages to Florence, the issuer.

作为储备货币，发行国享有一项令人匪夷所思的特权：世界上一些大宗商品和其他产品，即使既不开采也不生产，也可以用本国货币定价。现在想想会发生什么。来自欧洲乃至世界各地的资金涌入佛罗伦萨，在那里被重新铸造。人们对弗罗林的需求，也就是对这种硬币本身的需求，推高了弗罗林的价格，却压低了佛罗伦萨人的商​​品价格。随着本币升值，他们到处都能买到便宜货。与此同时，世界其他地区必须提供更多商品才能获得结算贸易所需的弗罗林。对于佛罗伦萨的银行家来说，这是一笔横财，因为这意味着他们可以低成本地进行海外投资：他们既能抢购交易，又能同时受益于国内流动性强的资本市场。佛罗伦萨人成了最受欢迎的买家，因为他们拥有人人都想要的货币^。

Being the reserve currency gives the issuer the outrageous privilege of some of the world’s commodities and other products being priced in your currency, even though you don’t mine them or produce them. Now think about what happens. Money from across Europe and beyond flowed into Florence, where it was reminted. The demand was for the florin, the coin itself, which pushes up the price of the florin but pushes down the price of goods for the Florentines. They get bargains everywhere as their currency rises in value. Meanwhile, the rest of the world must provide more stuff to get its hands on the florins that it needs to settle its trades. For Florentine bankers, this is a bonanza because it means they can invest abroad cheaply: they snap up deals while at the same time benefiting from liquid capital markets at home. Florentines became the favored buyers because they had the currency everyone wanted.⁷

在但丁看来，伪造者是罪大恶极的罪犯，因为他破坏货币体系，就是在破坏政府，而政府的根基正是建立在财政和金融的廉洁之上。伪造者不仅损害了货币，更威胁到了共和国的存亡。弗罗林的一个实际用途是促进贸易，让使用者确信货币未被伪造。因此，亚当的罪行不仅损害了佛罗伦萨的信誉，也损害了其对外声誉。任何干预佛罗伦萨货币的人，都是在阻碍佛罗伦萨的崛起。

For Dante, the counterfeiter was an atrocious criminal because by undermining the currency he was undermining the government, which had its basis in fiscal and financial probity. The counterfeiter wasn’t just damaging the currency; he was threatening the very existence of the republic. A practical purpose of the florin was to promote trade by giving the user confidence that the currency was unblemished by forgery. Therefore, Adam’s crime was a crime against Florentine credibility—not just internally, but externally too. Anyone who interfered with Florentine money was interfering with Florence’s ascent.

货币思维

The monetary mind

金钱不仅改变了佛罗伦萨人的经商方式，也改变了他们看待世界的方式，使他们与旧政权走向冲突，这与斐波那契的金融异端思想遥相呼应。银行业，尤其​​是大规模的商业银行业务，意味着要在教会面前如履薄冰。教会谴责以钱生钱的理念，因为它违背了托马斯·阿奎那完善的一项核心教义——“公平价格”。公平价格意味着所有货币都必须与劳动或土地等真实或有形的事物相关联。正是在这一点上，宗教人士托马斯·阿奎那与无神论者卡尔·马克思相遇了。他们都否定了货币的一个关键属性——抽象性——或许是因为抽象性会迷惑教条主义者的思维。为了维护教会作为唯一放贷者的地位，梵蒂冈精心策划了一场教会内部的优雅博弈，提出了一个修辞难题：如果利率是时间的代价，以一周、一个月的贷款利率来衡量，甚至更久，谁又能估量时间的价值呢？凡人怎能衡量时间的价值？显然，只有上帝才能做到，因为上帝是时间的创造者。因此，高利贷是对上帝的亵渎，因为时间是上帝创造的，只有上帝，或者他在人间的使者——主教们，才能为时间定价。

Money wasn’t just altering the way the Florentines went about their business; it changed the way they thought about the world, putting them on a collision course with the old regime, in an echo of Fibonacci’s financial heresy. Banking, and in particular merchant banking at scale, meant walking a fine line with the Church. The Church condemned the notion of making money out of money because it contradicted a central doctrine, perfected by Thomas Aquinas, known as the “just price.” The just price meant that all money had to relate to something real or tangible like work or land. This is where the religious St. Thomas Aquinas meets the atheist Karl Marx. They both rejected one of money’s key attributes—abstraction—maybe because abstraction confuses the dogmatic mind. In a dance of ecclesiastical elegance designed to allow the Church to remain the only moneylender in town, the Vatican came up with a rhetorical conundrum: if the interest rate is the price of time, measured by the interest rate on lending for a week, a month, or even longer, who can value this? How can a mere mortal tell the value of time? Only the Lord can do this, obviously, as the Lord is the creator of time. Usury was therefore a crime against God because God invented time and only God, or his messengers on earth, the bishops, could put a price on it.

由于世俗化，那些旨在教授斐波那契数学创新的算术学校挑战了教会教育，它们以逻辑取代教条，以数字取代迷信，以严谨取代猜测。随着商业势力的扩张，上帝与金钱之间的较量似乎愈演愈烈。这些商学院虽然仍然主要面向富裕家庭的子女，却改变了人们的教育方式。教育不再是人文学科的专属，僧侣也不再引领潮流。银行家和商人如今站在了新型数字教育的前沿，这种教育涉及风险、概率、测量，并最终培养人们重视未来而非仅仅探究过去。我们开始见证一种从演绎推理向归纳推理的转变，摆脱了已知知识的束缚，拥抱了未来可能发现的新事物。以金钱为媒介的数字世界与以圣经为媒介的教会教义格格不入。在但丁出生的时代，商人还只是个配角；但丁于 1321 年去世时，商人已经无处不在。金钱推动着欧洲走出但丁之前的黑暗，走向文艺复兴的光明。

Being secular, the reckoning schools that had been set up to teach Fibonacci’s mathematical innovations challenged ecclesiastical education by replacing dogma with logic, superstition with numerals, and guesswork with rigor. As merchant power expanded, a showdown between God and Mammon became increasingly likely. The business schools, while still very much reserved for the children of the well-off, changed the way people were educated. Education was no longer the preserve of the humanities, with monks leading the way. Bankers and merchants were now at the vanguard of a new type of numerical education, involving risk, probability, measurement, and, ultimately, training people to value the future rather than simply unravel the past. We were beginning to witness a shift from deductive to inductive reasoning, escaping the shackles of what we already know and embracing notions of what we might yet discover. The numerical world, mediated by money, was inconsistent with the teachings of the Church, mediated by scripture. The merchant, a bit player at the time of Dante’s birth, was ubiquitous by the time of his death in 1321. Money was propelling Europe out of the pre-Dantean darkness and into the Renaissance light.

网络的力量

The power of networks

很少有作品能比《普拉托商人》更好地描绘商人日常生活的节奏和精彩之处。《鸢尾花起源》（Iris Origo）初版于1957年。该书取材于15万封信件以及数千份其他记录，作者是出生于1335年左右托斯卡纳的白手起家商人弗朗切斯科·迪·马尔科·达蒂尼（Francesco di Marco Datini）。本书深入剖析了一位成功商人的私人生活和商业活动，揭示了14世纪末全球经济的复杂化和一体化程度。普拉托商人的账簿上镌刻着“以上帝和利润之名”的格言。

There are few better accounts of the day-to-day pace and excitement of a merchant’s life than The Merchant of Prato by Iris Origo, first published in 1957. Drawing on 150,000 letters and thousands more records from a self-made merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, born in Tuscany around 1335, it offers an insight into the private and business life of a successful trader, revealing how sophisticated and integrated the global economy was by the late fourteenth century. On the Merchant of Prato’s ledgers was inscribed the motto “In the name of God and Profit.”

我们初识达蒂尼时，他还是教皇之城阿维尼翁一位雄心勃勃的学徒。在接下来的三十五年里，他凭借严谨的作风、风险评估和大胆的冒险精神——以及斐波那契数列的数学知识——建立了一家全球性公司，其贸易网络横跨陆地和海洋，绵延数千英里。他的记录包括记录每日焦虑的日记，以及写给妻子玛格丽塔的情书。玛格丽塔既责备他，也安慰他，既是他的倾诉对象，也是他的知己。这对夫妇膝下无子，但当这位商人（用我们都柏林人的话来说）“搞到手”一个女奴（一个名叫露西亚的鞑靼人）怀孕后，玛格丽塔收养了这个孩子，并将她视如己出。达蒂尼常年奔波在外，而身为佛罗伦萨贵族的玛格丽塔则留在普拉托，负责家里的日常运营，他们通过大量的书信往来了解彼此的近况。我们看到一对夫妇在漫长而并非一帆风顺的婚姻生活中经历着起伏。达蒂尼还描述了他与塞尔·拉波的友谊，拉波是一位公证人、葡萄酒专家和美食家。他们谈论美食美酒、家务、服装贸易，以及对金钱、政治和宗教的看法，这些话题交织在一起，使得即使发生在七个世纪前，他们日常生活中的种种忧虑也显得格外熟悉。

We meet Datini as an ambitious apprentice in the papal city of Avignon. Over the next thirty-five years, through a combination of rigor, risk assessment, and daring—and armed with Fibonacci’s mathematics—he built a global company with a trading network covering thousands of miles across land and ocean. His records include a diary of daily anxieties, along with love letters to his wife Margherita, who upbraids and consoles him, acting as his sounding board and confidante. The couple are childless but when the merchant, as we’d say in Dublin, “went and got” one of the slaves (a Tartar called Lucia) pregnant, Margherita took the child in and raised her as her own daughter. With Datini on the road and Margherita, a Florentine noblewoman, holding the fort back in Prato, effectively overseeing the business at home, their many letters kept each other informed about what was going on. We see a couple dealing with the ups and downs of a long and not always straightforward marriage. Datini also describes his friendship with Ser Lapo, a notary, fine wine expert, and bon viveur. Their chat about food and wine, the household, the clothing trade, and their thoughts on money, politics, and religion are all in the mix, making the concerns of their daily life familiar even though they unfolded seven centuries ago.

达蒂尼的业务范围之广令人惊叹。他从英国科茨沃尔德地区收购最优质的羊毛，而令他的产品熠熠生辉的染料和固色剂——朱砂、巴西红、格拉纳红、藏红花和明矾——均来自一个覆盖黑海、北非沿岸、巴利阿里群岛、西班牙和黎巴嫩的贸易网络​​。^一件衣服的制作可能要归功于与英国、法国和佛兰德斯修道院院长的交易，以及遍布威尼斯、热那亚、巴塞罗那和马略卡岛的人脉网络。达蒂尼紧盯资金流向，密切关注着这张复杂网络中的每一个细节。而这仅仅是他服装生意的一部分。

The geographical range of Datini’s business is extraordinary. He bought the finest wool from the English Cotswolds, while the brilliant dyes and fixers that made his product sparkle—vermilion, brazil, grana, saffron, and alum—were procured from a trading network that covered the Black Sea, the North African coast, the Balearics, Spain, and Lebanon.⁸ One piece of clothing might be the result of deals with English, French, and Flemish abbots, and a network of contacts across Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, and Mallorca. Datini followed the money, keeping an eye on every detail in this complex web. And this was just for the clothing end of his business.

商人的实力不在于你懂多少，而在于你认识谁；不过就达蒂尼而言，或许两者兼而有之。他的影响力并非源于军队或世袭头衔，而是来自他的人脉网络，这一点从他留下的数千封信件中便可见一斑。

Merchant power is not what you know but who you know; though in Datini’s case, it was probably a combination of both. His clout stemmed not from an army or some hereditary title but from his network, evidenced by thousands of his letters.

达蒂尼的档案揭示了一个庞大的网络，一个横跨洲际的契约、关系和义务体系。斐波那契数列的数学原理支撑着这个体系，因为它是不同商人之间的通用语言；达蒂尼只是众多商人之一。新兴的金融技术，如资产负债表和复式记账法，也被广泛应用，用于衡量每项业务的盈亏。维系这个动态网络的纽带是金钱。如果没有金钱这一共同的媒介，复杂的商业网络将毫无意义。由于交易活动过于繁杂，每个商人不可能面面俱到，因此他们必须依赖某种东西来将所有这些活动简化为一个易于理解的数字。而这个“东西”就是金钱——利润和亏损、成本和收入，最终都以一个共同的分母来表示。

Datini’s archive reveals a network, a vast intercontinental system of contracts, relationships, and obligations. Fibonacci’s mathematics enabled this system as it was the common language of disparate merchants; Datini was one of many. New financial technology, the balance sheet, and double-entry bookkeeping were also employed, helping to benchmark each venture. The glue holding this dynamic network together was money. Without the common mediator of money, complex commercial networks do not make any sense. There is too much going on for each merchant to keep tabs on everything, so the merchants had to trust something to reduce all this activity to a comprehensible number. That something was money—profit and loss, cost and revenue, expressed in a common denominator.

理解网络经济学的一个有效方法是考察当今的社交媒体：像Instagram这样的平台依赖于其数百万用户，用户越多，网络就越强大。金钱作为一种社交技术，一直以来都受到……的影响，同时也促进着……网络。无论我们谈论的是吕底亚人和希腊人最初出现的基本网络，还是佛罗伦萨更为复杂的网络，网络经济学的基本属性都保持不变。从结构上看，网络是水平层级而非垂直层级。垂直层级是一种老式的自上而下的体系，以服从为基础。威胁中世纪佛罗伦萨的两大区域权力中心——梵蒂冈和神圣罗马帝国——就是典型的垂直层级体系。

A helpful way to think about network economics is to consider today’s social media: a platform like Instagram depends on its millions of users, and the more people who use it, the stronger the network becomes. Money, because it is a social technology, has always encouraged and been encouraged by networks. Whether we are talking about the basic networks as first emerged with the Lydians and then the Greeks, or these more sophisticated Florentine networks, the essential properties of network economics remain the same. Structurally, networks are horizontal hierarchies rather than vertical ones. A vertical hierarchy is an old-fashioned top-down system, underpinned by obedience. The two regional power bases that threatened medieval Florence, the Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire, were classic vertical hierarchies.

军阀和祭司的权威源于组织体系中的惯例或习俗，这种体系以服从、等级制度和围绕“大人物”（例如教皇或国王）运作的权力机构为结构。然而，如果资源仅仅用于取悦“大人物”及其亲信，那将是徒劳的。当所有人都对“大人物”俯首帖耳时，失宠轻则造成损害，重则危及生命。在垂直等级制度中，异议是危险的，但如果没有异议，创新从何而来？如果人人墨守成规，我们如何进步？我们如何引入新的做事方式？如果我们不奖励颠覆性创新，我们又如何发展？垂直等级制度看似稳固，实则脆弱不堪。

The authority of warlords and priests stemmed from practice or convention in an organizational system structured by subservience, lines of command, and a court of power operating around the “Big Man,” such as a pope or a king. However, if resources are spent on the sole objective of satisfying the Big Man and his cronies, they will be wasted. When everyone bows to the Big Man, falling out of favor is damaging at best or deadly at worst. Within vertical hierarchies, dissent is dangerous, but without dissent, where does innovation come from? If everyone conforms, how do we get better, how do we introduce new ways of doing things, and, if we don’t reward disruption, how do we progress? Vertical hierarchies can appear robust, but they are brittle.

相比之下，网络时刻处于压力之下，因此它们会不断适应。横向层级结构更有可能促进知识和商业探索，而这些正是经济演进的必要条件。网络受益于弱关系的强大。9^如果一个网络的联系过于紧密——例如严格的宗教、强烈的地域主义、顽固的民族主义或家族关系——那么这些网络就会受到限制。以货币为媒介的贸易网络​​更加灵活，因为货币是最终的弱关系，它以一种非排他的方式将我们联系在一起；每个人都在使用货币。而且，使用货币的人越多，金钱越强大，其绝对的联系就越弱。当金钱被视为构建人脉网络的工具时，它的力量就变得无比巨大。

In contrast, networks are constantly subject to strain and therefore they adapt. Horizontal hierarchies are more likely to foster intellectual and commercial inquiry, the conditions that make economic evolution possible. Networks benefit from the strength of weak ties.⁹ If a network’s ties are too strong—as with strict religions, intense localism, obdurate nationalism, or families—these networks are restricted. Trading networks, mediated by money, are more flexible because money is the ultimate weak tie, bringing us together in a nonexclusive manner; money is used by everyone. And the more who use it, the stronger it is, yet the weaker the absolute ties. When seen as a network builder, the power of money becomes enormous.

佛罗伦萨和其他贸易城市正在发生一些变化：数千年来统治社会的自上而下的垂直等级制度正逐渐受到一种新型权力结构——水平网络——的挑战。环境越活跃——例如，城市经济快速扩张——就会有更多的人加入到网络中，创造出更多的新产品和新思想，从而使网络更加强大。网络围绕着活动密集、联系便捷的集群展开。这些地方充满了经济活力。像佛罗伦萨这样的城邦就是商业集群，而金钱这种弱纽带将这些集群联系在一起。佛罗伦萨十二世纪的行会是地方性的网络，但到了十四世纪末，在国际金融的驱动下，它们开始走向全球。

Something was happening in Florence and other trading cities: the vertical hierarchies, governed from above, that had run societies for millennia were slowly beginning to be challenged by a new type of power structure, the horizontal network. The more dynamic the environment—say, a rapidly expanding urban economy—the more people will come into the network, creating more new products and new ideas and making the network stronger. Networks revolve around clusters where activity is intense and connections are easily made. These places bristle with economic energy. The city-states, like Florence, were commercial clusters, and the weak tie of money bound these clusters together. Florence’s twelfth-century guilds were localized networks, but by the end of the fourteenth century, they were going global, driven by international finance.

在文艺复兴前的王国时代，新兴的货币网络威胁着既有的秩序。垂直网络封闭，以国界和国家为基础；而水平网络则不受国界限制，兼具国际性和超国家性。商人阶层生活在城邦之中，他们对领土扩张战争并不热衷。他们深知战争代价高昂、资源浪费，还会耗尽国库。战争会摧毁一切网络，因此最好避免战争。金钱和商业世界为雄心勃勃、积极进取的人们提供了一种全新的生活方式。商人们很快便找到了拓展机遇的方法，他们使用的武器比刀剑更强大，比经文更具感染力。商人的权力建立在金钱之上，如果这个新兴阶层能够找到从国王和造币厂手中夺取货币控制权的方法，他们将势不可挡。我们即将从一个货币时代迈入一个金融时代。

In a pre-Renaissance world of kingdoms, new monetary networks threatened the status quo. Vertical networks are closed, based on borders and countries, but horizontal networks do not respect national boundaries, being both cosmopolitan and supranational. The merchant class lived in city-states, and they weren’t as interested in wars of territorial expansion. They understood that war is expensive, wasteful, and balance-sheet depleting. And wars destroy networks. Best avoided. Money and the mercantile world offered an entirely new way of life to ambitious go-getting people, and merchants soon figured out how to broaden their opportunities, using a weapon more potent than the sword, more evocative than scripture. Merchant power was based on money and if this new caste could figure out a way of wresting control of money from the king and the mint, they’d be unstoppable. We were about to move from an era of money to an era of finance.

凭空变出钱来

Money out of thin air

尽管弗罗林银币具有标志性地位，但佛罗伦萨当时正在发生一项同样重要的金融发展：银行业兴起。银行业最基本的业务是存款和贷款。现代银行业在佛罗伦萨的起源可以追溯到三个方面：典当、货币兑换和商业银行。佛罗伦萨的典当商以各种各样的商品作为抵押放贷。与此同时，货币兑换商则在集市和市场里摆摊，将装满硬币的盒子放在长凳上——意大利语称之为“ banco ”（“银行”一词的词源便由此而来）——然后用秤称重，进行硬币的买卖。随着来自欧洲各地的商人涌向佛罗伦萨的市场，各种各样的外国硬币开始流通。货币兑换商凭借积累的利润，逐渐转型为放贷人。

Notwithstanding the iconic status of the florin, there was an equally important financial development taking place in Florence: the emergence of banking. Banking at its most basic level is the business of depositing and lending money. The genesis of modern banking in Florence had three sources: pawnbroking, money changing, and merchant banking. Florentine pawnbrokers lent money against the collateral of a wide range of goods. Money changers, meanwhile, hung out in fairs and markets, laying out boxes of coins on a bench—a banco in Italian (hence the origin of the word “bank”)—and, using scales to determine weights, they bought and sold coins. As traders flocked from all over Europe to the markets of Florence, a huge variety of foreign coins would be doing the rounds. From their accumulated profits, the money changers were able to become moneylenders.

商业银行的出现是“放贷”制度的自然延伸。“放贷”是中世纪对农民的称呼，指的是在播种和收割之间的过渡期向他们提供贷款。在封建时代，正如库希姆笔下的美索不达米亚一样，经济具有明显的季节性，与自然的变迁息息相关。本质上，商业活动以土地为基础。我们吃土地上的东西，穿土地上的东西，住在土地上的东西里，对大多数人来说，除了食物、衣服和住所之外，几乎没有其他东西可言。由于季节性的时间滞后，佛罗伦萨的商人发展出多种放贷技巧，不仅用于弥补播种和收割的资金缺口，也用于弥补原材料加工成商品的空档期。在种子到谷物、羊毛到衣物的这段时间里，收割者、田间工人、纺纱工、织工等等都需要流动资金。

Merchant banking emerged as a natural sequence to the “putting out” system, the medieval term for lending to farmers to tide them over between sowing and harvesting. In the feudal age, as in Kushim’s Mesopotamia, the economy was a seasonal affair, tied to nature’s vicissitudes. Essentially, commerce was earth-based. We ate what came from the earth, we wore what came from the earth, we lived in what came from the earth, and for most people after food, clothing, and shelter there wasn’t much more. Due to seasonal time lags, Florentine merchants had developed many techniques for lending, not only to cover the sowing and harvesting shortfall but also lags for the processing of raw materials into goods. In this interval between seed and cereal, between wool and clothing, the harvester, the worker in the field, the spinner, the weaver, and so on needed working capital.

佛罗伦萨的羊毛织工行会（Arte della Lana）以预先约定的价格将原材料（例如羊毛）借给其他工人，待工人交回成品服装后再偿还——这是一种早期形式的应收账款贴现。新兴的企业家们借出原材料和工具，也就是启动生产所需的资金。他们很快就开始直接放贷用于投资，并收取合理的利息；或者，为了规避教会禁止收取利息的禁令，他们还会收取其他费用和加价，以确保放贷者从中获利。

The Florentine Arte della Lana, the wool weavers’ guild, lent raw materials, such as raw wool, to other workers at a predetermined price which would be paid off when the worker returned the finished garment—an early form of invoice discounting. The new entrepreneurs lent raw materials and tools, the necessary capital to initiate production. It did not require any giant leap of the imagination to start lending money directly for investment purposes, charging a decent rate of interest, or, to get around Church sanctions against interest, levying other fees and markups to make sure the lender turned a twist.

印钞机

The money machine

最初，如果商家想把钱转给另一个商家，而他们涉及不同的银行和金库，就得亲自把硬币从一个存款账户转移到另一个账户。这既繁琐又耗时。为什么不直接给银行开具一份书面文件，表明存款人想把这笔钱转给另一个存款人呢？这就是信用证。瞧，支票和支票簿的雏形就此诞生。如果你信任银行的信誉，那么这些纸片就如同现金一般。被欠款的商家可以要求债务人开具信用证，然后用信用证偿还自己的部分债务，这样就把第三个商家也纳入了信用网络，而这个商家可能与最初的债务人没有任何关系。重要的是，信誉良好的银行（通常是家族银行）充当了清算中心的角色，负责结算所有这些信用证。通过这种方式，信用证扩展了信任网络。

Initially, when a merchant wished to transfer money to another merchant, they would physically take the coins from one deposit to the other if they were dealing with different banks and different vaults. It was a cumbersome, time-consuming process. Why not just issue a written document to the banker indicating that the depositor wished to transfer such an amount to another depositor? This was called a letter of credit. Hey, presto, we have the origin of the check and the checkbook. If you trusted the bank to be good for the credit, then these pieces of paper were as good as money. A merchant who was owed money could ask his debtor to issue him a letter of credit, and he could then use that letter of credit to pay some of his own debt, thus bringing a third merchant into the network, who may have no connection with the original debtor. The important thing is that the reputable bank, usually a family bank, acted as a clearing house where all these letters of credit could be settled. In this way, the letter of credit expanded the network of trust.

信用证的近亲是汇票，它主要源于伦巴第银行业（尽管可能更早地借鉴了阿拉伯人的发明）。在达蒂尼生活的年代，汇票彻底改变了国际贸易，将佛罗伦萨与里昂、布鲁日与巴塞罗那、商人与生产商、供应商与银行家联系起来。欧洲银行向商人签发的汇票，在国外被认可，可以兑换特定金额的货币。只要银行信誉良好，商人就可以用这张汇票支付货款。汇票逐渐成为一种国际流通货币，使得商业体系得以蓬勃发展：更多的汇票，更多的商品，更多的贸易，更多的货币，更多的抵押品，更多的汇票。最终，欧洲的大型贸易博览会不仅是为了交换商品，更是为了结算遍布整个欧洲大陆的数千张汇票。而位于这一体系顶端的，正是商业银行家。

A first cousin of the letter of credit was the bill of exchange, largely a Lombardian banking innovation (though possibly lifted from the Arabs before them). During Datini’s lifetime, this instrument revolutionized international trade, linking Florence to Lyon, Bruges to Barcelona, merchant to producer, and supplier to banker. A bill of exchange, issued to a merchant by a European bank, was recognized abroad for a specified amount of money. As long as the bank was good for the money, a trader could use this bill of exchange to pay for produce. The bill of exchange became a sort of international tradeable currency, allowing the mercantile system to flourish exponentially: more bills of exchange, more goods, more trade, more money, more collateral, more bills of exchange. In time, the great trade fairs of Europe became as much about settling thousands of bills of exchange for trade that was going on all over the continent as they were about exchanging produce. Sitting at the top of the system was the merchant banker.

汇票是虚拟货币——一种除了信任和信心之外没有任何约束的货币。佛罗伦萨的信誉良好的银行，与热那亚、那不勒斯、米兰和威尼斯的银行一起，通过转向经济学家现在所说的“部分准备金银行制度”，发展成为信贷创造者。之所以称为部分准备金银行制度，是因为其理念是银行家只需保留一部分准备金来应对储户可能要求取回存款的情况。这样，银行家就可以利用剩余的存款来发放贷款，信贷增长呈指数级增长。货币发展的这一阶段，就像是从犁耕时代过渡到蒸汽机时代。以下是其运作方式。

Bills of exchange are virtual money—money with no constraints but trust and faith. Trusted Florentine banks evolved, alongside those in Genoa, Naples, Milan, and Venice, into the area of credit creation by moving to what economists now call “fractional reserve banking.” It is termed fractional reserve banking because the idea is that a banker only needs to keep a fraction of his reserves to cover the possibility that a depositor wants their money back. In this way the banker uses the rest of the money on deposit to create loans, and the growth of credit is exponential. This development in the evolution of money is like moving from the plow to the steam engine. Here’s how it worked.

正常情况下，你会把存款存入银行。十四世纪也是如此。这些钱对银行家来说价值连城，也是部分货币体系的核心。储备银行制度。商业银行家们意识到，存放在他们银行的大部分资金并不经常被提取。这其中有一个非常充分的理由：持有金银的人很容易成为窃贼的目标。存款提取缓慢意味着商业银行家可以将部分资金借给其他借款人。只要银行家保留合理的现金储备以应对突发提款，他就能以高利率放贷获利。

In normal times, you leave your deposits in the bank. The same was the case in the fourteenth century. This money is highly valuable to a banker and is at the core of fractional reserve banking. Merchant bankers realized that a large part of the money deposited with them was not frequently withdrawn. There was a very good reason for this: holders of gold and silver were an easy target for thieves. The slow withdrawal of deposits meant the merchant banker could lend some of this money to other borrowers. As long as the banker retained a reasonable reserve of cash to meet sudden withdrawals, he could benefit by lending the money at a high rate of interest.

随着这位商业银行家建立起诚信可靠的声誉，越来越多的存款涌入他的账户。随后，他得以进一步向佛罗伦萨经济扩张信贷。在许多情况下，他放出的资金在经济体系中流通，最终落入其他商人手中，而这些商人又将这些钱存入同一家银行。这形成了一个贷款循环，最终创造了存款，而这些存款又可以用来发放更多贷款，如此往复，银行俨然成了印钞机。这种乘数效应正是所有金融的源泉。

As the merchant banker built up his reputation for trust and honesty, more deposits flowed his way. He was then able to further expand credit into the Florentine economy. In many cases the money that he was lending moved through the economy and ended up in the hands of other merchants who, in turn, deposited that money with the same bank. This led to a process of loans, eventually creating deposits, which in turn could be used to create further loans, which in turn created further deposits, and so on, transforming banks into money machines. That multiplier effect is the fount of all finance.

至关重要的是，金融打破了皇家铸币厂与货币之间的联系。在过去，只有铸币厂才能发行货币。随着商业银行的出现，银行家拥有了创造货币的权力。金融凭空创造货币，开始将社会权力从国王转移到商人，从垂直网络转移到水平网络，从宫廷转移到办公室。

Crucially, finance broke the link between the royal mint and money. In the old days, only the mint could issue money. With the emergence of merchant banking, the banker had the power to create money. Finance, making money out of thin air, began to shift power in society from the king to the merchant, from the vertical network to the horizontal network, and from the palace to the office.

投资银行家，权力经纪人

Merchant banker, power broker

尽管达蒂尼信仰虔诚，但他最终还是成为了一名商业银行家，靠钱赚钱。和其他商人一样，他通过收取其他费用来规避教会禁止高利贷的禁令。虽然不再是利息，但最终结果却是一样的——更多的现金被变现，进而催生了更多的贷款、合同、债务人和债权人。这些发展催生了一批新的职员、公证人和律师。商法也随之发展，为商人、他们的代理人、供应商、客户和银行家制定了规则。

Datini, despite his devout faith, became a merchant banker, making money from money. Like other merchants, he got around the Church’s ban on usury by charging other fees instead of interest, but the end result was the same—more cash being made from cash, in turn leading to more loans, contracts, debtors, and creditors. These developments spawned a new class of clerks, notaries, and lawyers. Commercial law developed in tandem, setting the rules for merchants, their agents, suppliers, customers, and bankers.

为什么只局限于贸易融资？如果信用证体系行之有效，为什么不将其用于消费贷款呢？毕竟，商人也需要生活。于是，一种新的信用证体系应运而生，为日益壮大的商人阶层提供消费融资。达蒂尼最初在阿维尼翁靠贩卖盾牌、刀剑和锁子甲起家。如今，他已建立起一个全球商业帝国，他自己的银行不仅为整个帝国的运营提供资金，也为许多其他企业的运营提供资金。

Why stop at trade finance? If the letter of credit system was working, why not lend for consumption? Merchants had to live, after all. A new layer of letters of credit emerged, financing consumption for the growing merchant classes. Datini was a man who began his career in Avignon selling shields, swords, and chain mail. Now, astride a global empire, his own bank financed the whole operation and that of many others.

到他1410年去世时，欧洲已由纵横交错的贸易路线连接起来，这些路线沿着河流上下延伸，翻越山脉，南北东西贯穿，而商人则是这些路线的核心。即使是1348年黑死病的肆虐也未能撼动佛罗伦萨在货币、社会、文化和政治方面非凡的发展。尽管遭受黑死病的侵袭，佛罗伦萨的奠基货币——弗罗林——却并未贬值。这座城市或许失去了半数居民，但人们对这种硬通货的忠诚却丝毫未减。

By the time of his death in 1410, Europe was connected by a patchwork of trading routes, up and down rivers, over mountain ranges, north to south, east to west, and at the center of these routes were the merchants. Not even the devastation of the Black Death in 1348 could dent the extraordinary monetary, social, intellectual, and political development of Florence. Despite the Black Death, the florin, Florence’s foundational currency, did not devalue. The city might have lost half of its inhabitants, but the attachment to the hard currency was absolute.

在瘟疫之后的一个世纪里，在商人和网络经济的推动下，佛罗伦萨涌现出科西莫·德·美第奇、列奥纳多·达·芬奇和米开朗基罗等杰出人物，他们展现了惊人的智慧、艺术和商业才能。卓越的才智与精湛的艺术造诣相结合，并以商人阶层的经济实力为支撑，创造了一种全新的政治权力模式。这种联盟引发了对以往一切的质疑，并由此开启了文艺复兴，随后又带来了宗教改革。以及启蒙运动。很难想象，如果没有货币、信贷和商业的创新和力量推动经济摆脱封建主义，这些伟大的进步又怎能发生。

In the century after the plague, driven by the merchants and network economics, Florence radiated in the astonishing intellectual, artistic, and commercial genius of Cosimo de’ Medici, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Cerebral brilliance was allied with artistic virtuosity and anchored by the economic muscularity of the merchant class, creating an entirely new model for political power. This alliance would lead to a questioning of everything that had gone before, and this would usher in first the Renaissance, followed by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. It is difficult to see how any of these great leaps forward could have occurred without the accompanying innovation in and power of money, credit, and commerce driving the economy away from feudalism.

一幅新的欧洲版图正在形成，繁荣的意大利居于中心，佛罗伦萨则是其皇冠上的明珠之一，而这座城市最著名的居民后来被誉为文艺复兴时期的全才——一位才华横溢、精通多种语言的博学家，对艺术、哲学、数学、金融和商业都充满热情。这与但丁童年时期那座被城墙环绕的小镇截然不同。但这并非偶然。推动商人发展的催化剂是货币，尤其是银行发行的货币，它打破了造币厂的权力以及硬币的专制统治。银行家之间以良好的信誉而非贱金属为基础进行借贷。私人银行发行的货币（我们现在称之为金融）极大地促进了这一进程，贷款带动存款，存款又催生出更多贷款。货币将商业从物质层面转向了抽象层面。仅仅是纸币，只要有银行的信誉作担保，就与有黄金担保的弗罗林银币一样有价值。我们将进入一个不同的世界，而这个截然不同的世界的地理中心将从意大利半岛转移到阿尔卑斯山以外的高山地区。

A new map of Europe was emerging, with productive Italy at the center, and Florence one of the jewels in its crown, whose most celebrated resident would come to be known as Renaissance Man—a subtle, talented polymath, at home in a variety of languages and animated by art, philosophy, mathematics, finance, and commerce. It was a long way from the small walled town of Dante’s youth. But this didn’t happen by accident. The catalyst that drove the merchants forward was money and, in particular, bank-created money, which broke the power of the mint as well as the tyranny of the coin. Bankers lent to each other on the basis of sound reputation, not base metal. Money created by private banks, which we now call finance, supercharged this process, with loans driving deposits, begetting more loans. Money was moving commerce from the physical to the abstract. Mere paper, backed by a bank’s reputation, was as valuable as the florin itself backed by gold. We were moving into a different world and the geographical center of that very different world would shift from the Italian peninsula to the Ultramontane regions beyond the Alps.

骗子

The hustler

约翰内斯·古腾堡是个辩论高手。他的许多争执最终都闹上了法庭，给我们留下了这位才华横溢、屡屡游走在法律边缘的投机者的记录。古腾堡与债主、合伙人、前雇员，甚至未来新娘的父亲都发生过争执。他争吵的焦点包括金钱、股票、承诺、专利，以及女人——更准确地说，是他对女人的轻浮意图。关于古腾堡这个无赖的故事我们并不多见，但一些线索表明他确实是个无赖。一系列五花八门的诉讼和反诉，生动地描绘出一个在十五世纪欧洲游走于法律边缘的投机企业家形象。

Johannes Gutenberg was a great man for an argument. Many of his fights ended up in court, leaving us with records of a talented chancer, regularly sailing too close to the wind. Gutenberg fell out with creditors, partners, former employees, and fathers of potential brides. He fought over money, stock, promises, patents, and women—or, more accurate, his own casual intentions toward women. Gutenberg the bounder is not a tale we have heard much about, but certain clues suggest he was a scoundrel. A colorful paper trail of suits and countersuits paints a vivid picture of a hustler-entrepreneur, living on the edge in fifteenth-century Europe.

古腾堡总是债台高筑，信用评级糟糕，现金流总是捉襟见肘。作为一名雄心勃勃的金匠，他急需用钱，但由于之前拖欠债务，他在美因茨的街头巷尾、酒馆和小巷里名声扫地。他违背了在斯特拉斯堡的婚约，还被新娘的父亲追讨，这表明他并不介意断绝后路。五、约翰内斯·古腾堡可不是循规蹈矩的人。从风险角度来看，我们不妨说古腾堡并非AAA级，更像是垃圾债券。但古腾堡深知上帝蕴藏着财富，如果他能找到搭上教会这趟“摇钱树”的捷径，一切就都搞定了。

Gutenberg found himself perennially in debt, with a dodgy credit rating and constant cash flow problem. An ambitious goldsmith, he needed money, but having defaulted on previous debts, his reputation was tarnished in the streets, taverns, and alleyways of Mainz. The fact that he’d reneged on a Strasbourg marriage promise and was being pursued by the father of the bride suggests our man wasn’t averse to burning a bridge or five. Conventional, Johannes Gutenberg was not. From a risk perspective, let’s just say J.G. wasn’t triple-A, more a walking junk bond. But Gutenberg knew there was money in God, and if he could find a way to board the ecclesiastical gravy train, he’d be sorted.

当意大利的商人银行家们可能正在打造他们自己的印钞机时，在地势平坦的德国内陆，金钱仍然牢牢掌握在那些头戴尖顶帽、手持香炉的宗教人士手中。年轻的古腾堡离金光闪闪的圣殿最近的距离，是在宗教市场那摇摇欲坠的角落——俗气的商品交易中艰难求生。15世纪30年代初，我们发现他浑身湿透地出现在圣城亚琛，试图向朝圣者兜售“祝福过的”镜子。直到今天，仍然有人靠在节日庆典上兜售商品为生，正如他们会告诉你的那样，露天交易的成败往往取决于天气。不幸的是，在1432年的节日当天，天降大雨，庆典被迫取消，古腾堡不仅面临着滞销的——更糟糕的是，根本卖不出去的——库存，还有一堆账单，更不用说还有未偿还的贷款。

While the Italian merchant bankers may have been creating their own money machine, up in the flat German hinterland, money was still very much in the hands of those with the pointy hats and incense. The closest young Gutenberg was getting to the golden tabernacle was hustling in the precarious end of the religious market—tacky merchandising. In the early 1430s, we find him drenched in the holy city of Aachen, trying to flog pilgrims “blessed” mirrors. There’s a certain type who to this day earn their crust selling merch at festivals and, as they will attest, the difference between a profitable day’s trading in the open air and a commercial disaster can often be the weather. Tragically, for Johannes on the day of the 1432 festival, the heavens opened, the feast day was canceled, leaving Gutenberg with unsold—and worse still, unsellable—stock, along with a stack of bills, not to mention outstanding loans.

此时的约翰内斯·古腾堡大概三十多岁，失业在家，债台高筑，生活每况愈下。他需要一份比兜售仿冒圣镜更好的工作。他深知零售业的滋味；下次他必须进军高端市场。尽管财务状况一团糟，古腾堡却有一个革命性的想法。他掌握着一项足以彻底颠覆抄写员、公证人和僧侣行业的发明。他认为，就短期而言，他的发明将使当时的主导金融机构——教会——受益。但他完全没有意识到，他的印刷机最终会产生多么深远的影响。眼下，年轻的古腾堡急需资金来实现他的计划：成为美因茨大主教的首席印刷师。

At this stage, probably in his thirties, out of work, and up to his gills in debt, Johannes was going backward. He needed something better than flogging knock-off holy mirrors. He knew what retail felt like; next time he needed to go upmarket. Despite his shambolic finances, Gutenberg had a revolutionary idea. He was sitting on an invention that would disrupt the business of scribes, notaries, and monks forever. In the immediate term, he figured his contraption would benefit the dominant financial institution of the day: the Church. He had no idea just how consequential his printing press would end up being. Right now, young Gutenberg needed finance to execute his plan to become chief printer of the Archbishop of Mainz.

对古腾堡而言幸运的是，十五世纪的德国商业繁荣，充斥着年金、经纪人和放贷人。金融创新提高了人们的风险偏好，资金也十分充裕。当时的德国由众多王国和贸易城市组成，每个城市都铸造自己的货币。由于流通的货币种类繁多，且没有官方汇率，这就为套利提供了可乘之机。教会禁止高利贷，但在贸易集市上，精明的商人利用汇率的不精确性，在教会不知情的情况下收取贷款，从中牟利。汇率的波动推动了整个德国的贸易发展。

Luckily for Gutenberg, commercial Germany of the fifteenth century was awash with annuities, brokers, and moneylenders. Risk appetite had been heightened by financial innovations, and money was plentiful. Germany was a patchwork of kingdoms and trading cities, each minting their own coins. With many different currencies circulating and no official exchange rate, a gap opened up for arbitrage. The Church forbade usury, but at trade fairs canny merchants exploited the imprecise exchange rates to extract profit by charging for loans without the Church knowing. The fluctuating exchange rates drove trade all across Germany.

借用明天的资源

Borrowing from tomorrow

从1337年到1453年，英法百年战争使地中海贸易转向东方。英法的困境却为德国带来了机遇。意大利的贸易不再沿着流经战火纷飞的法国的罗讷河，而是转向莱茵河，最终抵达和平的德国。在意大利，重大的地缘战略冲击导致半岛失去了其地理优势。奥斯曼帝国的到来切断了丝绸之路，迫使欧洲基督教徒寻找通往印度的其他途径，地中海不再是贸易路线，反而成了死胡同。哥伦布开辟了通往新大陆的大西洋航线，而达伽马则经非洲抵达东方，欧洲的海上贸易中心从地中海转移到了大西洋。

From 1337 to 1453, the Hundred Years’ War between France and England diverted Mediterranean trade eastward. France and England’s difficulty was Germany’s opportunity. Italian trade moved away from the Rhone, which flowed through war-torn France, toward the Rhine, moving up through peaceful Germany. In Italy, major geostrategic shocks resulted in the peninsula losing its geographical advantage. The arrival of the Ottomans closed down the Silk Roads, compelling the European Christians to find another way to India, and rather than being a trade route, the Mediterranean became a cul-de-sac. Columbus opened up the Atlantic to the New World while de Gama reached the East via Africa, shifting Europe’s maritime trading axis from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

葡萄牙、西班牙、荷兰以及后来的英国等国家在这个世界中繁荣发展。西非黄金市场的准入渠道改善以及巴尔干地区额外的采矿活动意味着欧洲的白银和黄金更加丰富；白银产量……据估计，萨克森、波西米亚和匈牙利的人口在十五世纪中叶增长了五倍。与此同时，捷克、波兰和匈牙利等地崛起了新的势力，从汉萨同盟的波罗的海沿岸到农业发达的多瑙河沿岸，中欧的金融中心从地中海地区转移到了中欧大陆和新兴的德国经济。

Countries such as Portugal, Spain, Holland, and, later, Britain prospered in this world. Improved access to gold markets in West Africa and extra mining in the Balkans meant silver and gold were more plentiful in Europe; silver production in Saxony, Bohemia, and Hungary is estimated to have increased fivefold in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. At the same time, new powers emerged in the Czech lands, Poland, and Hungary, and from the Hanseatic Baltic to the agricultural Danube, central Europe’s financial axis shifted away from the Mediterranean and toward the central landmass and the new German economy.

这些事件改变了欧洲的经济格局，而货币的创新则彻底改变了欧洲人的时间观念。在中世纪，大多数人几乎不需要任何长期的财务规划。他们忧心忡忡，担忧饥荒、恶劣天气、作物歉收、瘟疫以及上帝的旨意，根本无暇顾及收成之后的事情。对大多数人来说，“长远”的概念并不存在。但对于拥有土地的地方乡绅而言，“长远”却是真实存在的，未来是值得投资的。即使在今天，贫富之间的一个关键区别仍然在于时间跨度。富人的时间跨度更长。当你不必为眼前的账单发愁时，你就有余力去规划未来——比如上大学或规划职业生涯。你可以等待投资的回报。财富成就未来；贫穷则扼杀未来。正如十四世纪末十五世纪初那样，今天依然如此。

While these events altered Europe’s economic geography, innovations in money transformed Europeans’ sense of time. In the Middle Ages, most people had little need for any long-term finance. Concerned about famine, weather, crop failure, plague, and God, they did not have the luxury of seeing beyond the harvest. For most, the concept of the long run didn’t exist. But for the landowning local squire, the long run was real, and the future was something to invest in. Even today, one of the key differences between rich and poor is time horizons. Rich people’s time horizons are longer. When you are not worried about paying bills today, you have the luxury of planning for tomorrow—say university or a career. You can wait for an investment to pay off. Wealth enables the future; poverty obliterates it. As it was in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, so it is today.

欧洲以农业为主的经济，其财富基础是农业及其税收。尽管中世纪的商人阶层逐渐兴起，但当时的经济仍然主要由贵族和教会从农民身上榨取财富构成。每年的什一税或租金是重要的收入来源，也是大多数前工业时代金融体系的根基。土地是经济的基石。然而，土地缺乏流动性，而货币运作的奥秘之一就在于将不动产转化为流动收入。罗马人通过抵押土地解决了这个问题。日耳曼人即将进行类似的尝试。有一种产品至今仍然存在——抵押贷款，其中的“ mort ”在法语中是“死亡”的意思。

The base source of wealth of Europe’s largely agricultural economy was farming and the taxes levied on it. The economy of the Middle Ages, despite the emerging merchant, was still mostly about aristocrats and the Church squeezing money out of peasants. The annual tithe or rent was a stream of income, the root of most preindustrial finance. Land was the bedrock. But land is illiquid, and part of money’s alchemy is turning inert wealth into liquid income. The Romans solved this problem by pawning land. Germans were about to experiment with a product that is still with us today—the mortgage, the mort bit meaning “dead” in French.

在中世纪的德国，富有的地主急需现金。他们将土地抵押给放贷人，通常是修道院。僧侣们从募捐箱中筹集资金，并将抵押物借给乡绅。乡绅为了获得这笔现金，需要向修道院支付一定的利息。土地的收入，也就是从农民那里收取的租金，都归修道院所有。贷款到期时，修道院本应收回贷款。由于贵族们出了名的不善理财，违约现象屡见不鲜。一旦违约，放贷人便可取得土地所有权，从而获得土地。（你觉得天主教会是如何成为世界上最大的地主之一的？）因此，这种合同中包含了违约（或死亡）条款，故得名“抵押”或“死亡合同”。然而，这仍然给放贷人——修道院——带来了流动性问题。虽然土地很有价值，但它不是流动资产，而且修道院还需要现金购买蜡烛、盐等物品，为什么还要拥有更多的土地呢？

In medieval Germany, wealthy landowners wanted cash. They pledged their land to the moneylender, typically the monastery, and with the collateral in the bag, the monks—who got some of their money from the collection box—lent out the lump sum to the squire. The squire paid a rate of interest to the monastery for the pleasure of getting the cash lump sum. The income from the land, those rents extracted from the peasants, went to the monastery. At the end of the term of the loan, the monastery looked to be repaid. As aristocrats are notoriously bad with other people’s money, defaults were regular. In the event of default, the lender took the title and thereby acquired the land. (How do you think the Catholic Church became one of the biggest landowners in the world?) The contract thus had default (or death) built in, hence the name mortgage, or death contract. However, it still left the moneylender, the monastery, with a liquidity problem. Although land was valuable, it wasn’t liquid, and why would a monastery, which also needed cash for candles, salt, and the like, want yet more land?

如果还有别的办法呢？贵族们与其将整个庄园抵押给修道院，不如将部分土地抵押给其他人，由修道院充当中间人？这样一来，修道院既不必独自承担所有风险，又能获得报酬，而贵族们则可以通过向众多小债主借款来摆脱教会的束缚。从某种意义上说，教会和乡绅通过寻找其他贷款人——那些身怀少量积蓄的中型农民、工匠或手艺​​人——实现了彼此的解脱。这些人或许把钱藏在床垫下，而这些钱本可以用来赚取贷款利息。通过分散风险，许多贷款机构，贵族面临的整体利率可能较低，但小额贷款人仍然能获得一些收入，以利息的形式。年金制度由此诞生。只要收成好，贵族又不是个彻头彻尾的骗子，这套体系就能运作良好。即便他是个骗子，也可以在体系中预留较小的违约风险，这样贷款人仍然能收回本金，因为土地本身仍然有利可图。

What if there was another way? Rather than mortgaging their entire estate to the monastery, could aristocrats mortgage smaller bits of their land to someone else, with the monastery acting as the broker? In this way, the monastery wasn’t left holding the baby, but still received a fee, and the aristocrat could free himself of the Church by borrowing from many smaller lenders. In a sense, the Church and the squire freed each other from each other by finding alternative lenders in medium-sized farmers, craftsmen, or artisans who had a small amount of money under the mattress, which could instead be gaining some interest on a loan. By spreading the risk across many lenders, the overall interest rate faced by the aristocrat might be lower, but the small lender would still get some income, in the form of interest. And thus the annuity was born. As long as the harvest was good and the aristocrat wasn’t a complete rake, the system should work well. Even if he was a rake, a small default risk could be built in, so that the lender would still get his money back, because the underlying land was still profitable.

由于确信大多数年金都能按时支付，因此可以进行交易、用于偿还债务，并最终作为遗产传给子女。一位手头略有积蓄的工匠可以购买年金，从而获得未来的收入来源，并以此作为土地未来收益的担保；而贵族则能获得现金。年金使原本流动性差的土地变得流动性强。德国金融成功的一个标志是，14世纪利率从每年约12%大幅下降至6%。

Secure in the knowledge that most annuities would be paid, they could be traded, used to cancel debts, and ultimately passed on as inheritance to children. An artisan who might have had a bit of money squirrelled away could buy an annuity and this would give him a stream of income in the future, a pledge on future earnings from the land, while the aristocrat received cash. Annuities made illiquid land liquid. A sign of the success of German finance was the dramatic fall in interest rates throughout the fourteenth century from around 12 percent to 6 percent per annum.

当借贷成本下降时，借贷规模自然会增加，导致年金交易和信贷整体出现爆炸式增长。年金发行量越大，市场流动性就越强，对储户的吸引力就越大，借款人可获得的现金也就越多。基于农业年金的成功，德国城镇推出了一种名为市政融资的产品，城镇通过向本市居民借款来资助公共基础设施建设。城镇向这些贷款人发行的市政债券最终被交易，因为它们构成了一种收入流。德国即将进入一个宽松货币时代——一个流动性充裕的时代——古腾堡将从中受益。

When the price of borrowing falls, obviously the amount of borrowing rises, resulting in an explosion in the trade of these annuities and in credit in general. The more annuities around, the more liquid the market, the more attractive these loans became for savers, and the more cash available for borrowers. Based on the success of agriculture-based annuities, German towns introduced another product called municipal finance, where towns borrowed from their own citizens to fund public infrastructure. The municipal bonds that the towns issued to these lenders ended up being traded as they constituted a stream of income. Germany was about to enter an era of easy money—a time of liquidity—and Gutenberg stood to benefit.

拯救灵魂

Saving souls

尽管世人皆知古腾堡的《圣经》，但真正让约翰内斯·古腾堡赚得盆满钵满的第一个机会，却是一项更为卑劣却也利润丰厚的副业：拯救德国人的灵魂。当时，新兴的德国城市由贪婪的教会统治，人们仍然深受信仰和迷信的束缚。中世纪教会依然是主要的敛财机器。论赚钱，没有哪个君主或商人能与修道院相提并论。教会拥有一项凌驾于其他一切之上的权力。它拥有最引人入胜的起源故事，这赋予了它印钞的特权——并非直接印钞，而是通过捐赠将信仰转化为金钱，从而间接地印钞。民众每年向教会缴纳什一税，他们就像一个被俘虏的听众，每当教会面临财政紧缩时，都可以轻易地从中榨取钱财。

Although the world knows Gutenberg for his bible, the first profit-making opportunity that sucked money into Johannes’s mitts was a grubbier, though lucrative, side hustle: the business of saving German souls. An emerging urban Germany, ruled by an avaricious Church, was still beholden to faith and superstition. The medieval Church remained the main money-making machine. No monarch or merchant came close to the cloister when it came to turning a buck. There was one power the Church had that trumped all others. It had the best origin story, giving it a license to print money, not directly but indirectly, by turning faith into money via donations. Annual tithes were paid to the Church and the population was a captive audience, easily tapped up every now and then when the Church faced a revenue squeeze.

除了募捐之外，教会还有另一个无与伦比的敛财妙招，而古腾堡这位机会主义者早已盯上了它。教会仿佛变戏法一般，声称只要支付少量费用就能拯救灵魂。把天堂变成金钱，这简直是天方夜谭。很难想象还有比这更精明的敲诈勒索手段。交易很简单：人们可以为已故或临终的亲人购买一份“赦罪书”，证明他们的罪孽将被赦免，灵魂可以免于下地狱，无论他们在世时的行为如何。正因如此，教会的收入源源不断。死者或即将离世者的亲属们慷慨解囊，换取一张直达天堂的通行证。试想一下，如果你刚刚读完但丁的《神曲·地狱篇》（当时这本书已经流传了一个世纪），你会不惜一切代价避免下地狱的九层地狱，免遭其中的种种污秽和折磨。

As well as the whip-round, the Church had another unbeatable revenue-raising trick that Gutenberg, ever the opportunist, was eyeing up. In a miracle of wine into water proportions, the Church professed to save your soul in return for a small fee. Transforming heaven into money was quite the party trick. A finer extortion racket would be difficult to conceive. The deal was simple. People could buy a “letter of indulgence” for a dead or dying relative confirming that their sins would be forgiven, allowing the soul to avoid hell, irrespective of their behavior on earth. Because of this, the Church had a never-ending stream of income. The relatives of the dead or the soon-to-be-dead stumped up cash in return for a straight pass directly to the kingdom of heaven. Imagine having just read Dante’s Inferno, which by then had been in circulation for a century—you’d do anything to avoid the nine circles of hell with their abominations and befoulments.

出售赎罪券将罪人变成了现成的现金。还有什么比这更好的生意呢？利用家人无条件的爱来拯救逝者的灵魂。对于当时教会而言，充斥着懒散的修士和其他依附者，出售赎罪券简直就是印钞机，如同在修道院的围墙内拥有了造币厂。在当今天主教世界，赎罪券的二十一世纪后裔便是弥撒卡。虔诚的哀悼者购买教会发行的“贺卡”，为新近逝去的亲人“献上”弥撒。父亲葬礼后，我家壁炉架上摆满了弥撒卡。每一张卡片都代表着生者向教会支付的一份“款项”，希望确保虔诚的亡者灵魂平安归来。

Selling indulgences turned sinners into ready cash. What better business could there be, leveraging the unconditional love of a family member to save the soul of the deceased? For the Church, stuffed to the gills with indolent monks and other hangers-on, selling indulgences was a money-printing bonanza, like having the sovereign mint within the walls of the cloister. The twenty-first-century descendant of the letter of indulgence is the Mass card in today’s Catholic world. Devout mourners buy a “greeting card” issued by the Church to “offer up” a Mass for the recently deceased. Mass cards adorned the mantelpiece in our house after my father’s funeral. Each card represents a payment from the living to the Church hoping to ensure safe passage for the soul of the faithfully departed.

教会资金自由流动过程中一个潜在的瓶颈是赎罪券的誊写流程。十五世纪初，如同过去一千年来一样，誊写赎罪券的流程始于宰杀动物用作羊皮纸，然后再聘请昂贵的抄写员。这项业务成本高昂，因为它需要屠宰场、书法家以及复杂的生产流程。对教会而言，印刷生产线效率越高，就能赚取越多的利润。而这正是古腾堡的机会。他凭借其新型印刷机垄断了赎罪券的印刷市场，并在此过程中让自己和老板——美因茨大主教（我们稍后会再次提到这个职位）——发家致富。

A potential bottleneck for the Church in this free flow of cash was the process of writing up the letters of indulgence. In the early fifteenth century, as had been the case for a thousand years, writing began with killing an animal to use as parchment, before employing the expensive services of a scribe. The business was costly as it demanded abattoirs, calligraphers, and a complex production process. For the Church, the more efficient the printing production line, the more money it could make. And this was Gutenberg’s opportunity. He would corner the market for making indulgences with his new printing machine and in the process enrich himself and the boss, the Archbishop of Mainz (an office we will return to before the end of our story).

约翰内斯原本是一名金匠和招牌制作师，他成功说服大主教，一台简易的印刷机就能源源不断地印制赎罪券，其产量甚至超过一位一丝不苟、用鹅毛笔不慌不忙的僧侣。就像意大利银行家通过部分准备金制度放贷数倍于原始存款一样，古腾堡也能大量印制赎罪券。古腾堡通过印刷术取代了书写缓慢的抄写员。他展现出推销员对人性的敏锐洞察力，设计出通用信件，巧妙地留出超大的空间供那些喜欢炫耀慷慨的赞助者签名，以便他们突出自己的慷慨。古腾堡的洞见在于，人们的动机与其说是拯救灵魂，不如说是获得公众眼中“最慷慨的赞助者”的地位。

A goldsmith and signwriter by trade, Johannes convinced the archbishop that a rudimentary printing machine could make money hand over fist, producing more indulgences than a meticulous monk with an unhurried quill. Like the Italian bankers who lent out multiples of an original deposit via their fractional reserve banking, Gutenberg could generate multiples of the slow-writing scribe by printing. Showing a salesman’s aptitude for human psychology, Gutenberg produced generic letters that cleverly left an extra-large space for the bragging indulgence-sponsors to sign so that they could highlight their generosity. Gutenberg’s insight was that what motivated people wasn’t so much saving souls as acquiring the status in public of being the most generous sponsor.

赎罪券只是个开始。古腾堡的目标是《圣经》。与那些略有闲钱的人也能买到的普通赎罪券不同，《圣经》只有富人才能购买，并捐赠给修道院，以换取修道院为慷慨捐赠者的灵魂祈祷。与出售《圣经》相比，出售赎罪券简直是小巫见大巫。古腾堡计划借助他的新印刷机兜售的《圣经》绝非普通的《圣经》。《圣经》越精美，价格越高——古腾堡涉足《圣经》生意并非为了上帝，而是为了金钱。每个人都需要运气，即使是最精明的投机者也不例外，而1453年，古腾堡的运气来了。

Indulgences were only the beginning. Gutenberg had his eyes on the bible. Unlike common indulgences, bought by those with a few extra bob, bibles were only purchased by the wealthy and were gifted to monasteries in return for prayers for the soul of the munificent donor. Selling indulgences was small beer in comparison to selling bibles. The bible Gutenberg planned to flog with the help of his new printing machine would be no ordinary bible. The more beautiful the bible, the higher the price—Gutenberg wasn’t going into the bible business for God, but for money. Everyone needs luck, even the pushiest of hustlers, and in 1453 Gutenberg got lucky.

虚荣的教皇

A vain pope

教宗庇护二世是个颇具个性的人物——他好色成性，嗜酒如命，还喜欢寻欢作乐。他至少有两个孩子，其中一个是在他早年的一次商务旅行中于苏格兰出生的。尽管他发誓永不再踏足那片“冬日阳光未曾照耀之地”，但^他在苏格兰的半年却过得充实而富有成效（也繁衍后代）。几年后，在法国，他的第二个孩子出生了，这几乎让他养成了生育的习惯。而这第二个孩子，正是这位精力充沛的年轻教宗又一次海外旅行的产物。除了对女性的关注之外，庇护二世还自诩为一位粗俗喜剧作家。他是唯一一位拥有此项殊荣的教宗。他是情色小说家，他的诗作《两个恋人的故事》与你想象中一位神职人员的作品截然不同。

Pope Pius II was quite the character—a carouser, womanizer, and boozer. He fathered at least two children, one in Scotland on an early business journey. Although he vowed never to return to that “place unvisited by winter sun,”¹ his half year in Scotland was spent productively (and reproductively). He was in danger of making it a habit when, a few years later in France, a second child was born, the product of yet another foreign jaunt for our vigorous young pope. Apart from his eye for the ladies, Pius quite fancied himself as a writer of bawdy comedies. He is the only pope to have the additional accolade of erotic novelist, and his poem “The Tale of Two Lovers” is not what you might expect from a man of the cloth.

尽管教宗庇护十二世肉体情欲旺盛，但他仍成为当时一位重要的作家，并执掌着一个强大的教廷。他从未让内心的放荡不羁凌驾于教条的公开立场之上，而是支持十字军东征，并主张教宗凌驾于傲慢的大主教之上。他甚至设法与另一位美德的化身——弗拉德三世（穿刺者弗拉德）结盟，以保护基督教的东巴尔干地区免受奥斯曼帝国的侵略。当欧洲文明岌岌可危时，区区几颗人头又算得了什么呢？除了与老朋友德古拉伯爵结盟之外，庇护十二世还在烛光下奋笔疾书，完成了十三卷本的《评注》，这部作品记录了他的生平及其所处的时代。

Despite his carnal weakness, Pope Pius became a significant author of the time and presided over a strong papacy. Never letting his own inner libertine dominate his dogmatic public position, he supported the Crusades and advocated the primacy of the papacy over uppity archbishops. He even managed to stitch together an alliance with that other paragon of virtue, Vlad the Impaler, to protect the Christian eastern Balkans from the Muslim Ottomans. What were a few heads on spikes when European civilization was at stake? When he wasn’t making alliances with his old mate Count Dracula, Pius was writing—straining his eyes by candlelight—as he worked through his thirteen volumes of essays, the Commentaries, a diary of his life and times.

如同任何一位自尊自重的教皇一样，庇护十二世也喜爱奢华，钟情于美酒、绘画和建筑。共和制的佛罗伦萨及其商业银行家引领潮流，打造出世界上最美丽的城市，教廷不得不做出回应。为了不甘示弱，庇护十二世也开始涉足城市规划。他夷平了自己成长的托斯卡纳小镇科尔西尼亚诺，并在原址上建造了一座微缩版的佛罗伦萨，拥有大教堂、各种宫殿和几座哥特式教堂。他谦逊地将这座新城更名为皮恩扎——庇护之城，以此表达祝圣之情。与绘图员、建筑工人、建筑师和艺术家们不知疲倦地工作，加上深夜的奋笔疾书，进一步损害了他的视力。这位虚荣的情圣讨厌在公共场合戴眼镜，但当教皇需要向信众朗读一本精美的手抄本圣经时，这种虚荣心就有点棘手了。他需要一本不用戴眼镜也能阅读的圣经——而约翰内斯·古腾堡提供了解决方案。

Like any self-respecting pontiff, Pius had a fondness for a bit of luxury, enjoying fine wines, paintings, and architecture. With republican Florence and its merchant bankers setting the pace, building the most beautiful city in the world, the papacy had to react. Not to be outdone, Pius tried his hand at urban design. He razed the village he was brought up in, a place called Corsignano in Tuscany, and built a miniature Florence in its stead, replete with Duomo, various palazzi, and a few Gothic churches. He humbly consecrated it by changing its name to Pienza—the town of Pius. Working tirelessly with draftsmen, builders, architects, and artists, added to all the late-night scribbling, took further toll on his eyes. This vain lothario hated having to wear glasses in public, but when a pope is expected to read to his congregation from a delicately hand-inscribed bible, such vanity can be a bit tricky. He needed a bible he could read without glasses—and Johannes Gutenberg provided the solution.

设计之王

The design king

古腾堡早年作为金匠的训练，使他精于精细的工艺和美学。他决心用精美的设计征服读者。他印刷的圣经不仅比手抄本更便宜、更快捷，而且也更加美观。古腾堡深知清晰的章节标题和合适的间距能使阅读更加便捷，于是着手彻底革新书籍的呈现方式。他的版式设计定会让读者赏心悦目。他的顾客——主教、红衣主教，乃至教皇本人——早已习惯了华丽的装潢，必然会被深深吸引。第一印象至关重要。

Gutenberg’s training as a goldsmith attuned him to intricate work and aesthetics. He intended to dazzle his audience with design. His printed bibles would not only be cheaper and quicker to produce than the handwritten prototypes, but they would also be more beautiful. Understanding that it would be easier to navigate the text with clear chapter headings and spacing, Gutenberg set about completely reimagining how books were presented. His layout would delight the reader. Accustomed to finery, his customers—bishops, cardinals, and the pope himself—must be enthralled. First impressions matter.

他的标志性设计是鲜红色的章节标题，由页面中央醒目的分割线支撑，两侧是两列清晰易读的文字，文字表面涂有清漆并凸起。古腾堡运用清漆，赋予他的圣经一种独特而华丽的质感。两列文字饰以精美的边框，边框上绘有金色和其他各种鲜艳色彩的动植物图案。2^这种设计令人惊艳，极具现代感。它仿佛来自未来，与之前的手写本截然不同。最终的成品清晰易读，给当时一位重要的影响者——近视的教皇庇护二世留下了深刻的印象。他曾这样评价古腾堡的圣经：“不用戴眼镜也能读懂。” ³上帝的印刷师约翰内斯·古腾堡，从此走上了印刷之路。

His design trademark was a scarlet chapter heading, propped up by a bold division down the middle of the page, with a column of easy-to-read text on either side that was lacquered and raised in varnish. By using varnish, Gutenberg gave a unique and sumptuous feel to his bibles. The two columns of text were decorated with beautiful borders of animals and plants in gold and various other bright colors.² The design was stunning and modern. It felt like the future and was completely different from the handwritten manuscripts that had preceded it. The result was wonderfully readable and it impressed one important influencer of the time, the short-sighted Pope Pius II, who wrote of Gutenberg’s pages, “You could read them without your glasses.”³ God’s printer, Johannes Gutenberg, was on his way.

创新者的一项关键特质是能够将各种先前的发明结合起来，并通过反复试验将其转化为新产品。印刷机的工程奇迹备受赞誉，其效率之高也令人惊叹：古腾堡印刷多部圣经的时间，相当于抄写员手写一部的时间。圣经也古腾堡的圣经精美绝伦，触感极佳。他的设计清晰明快，引人注目。很可能，古腾堡早年作为金匠，从事贵金属加工的经历影响了他对细节的关注。一旦你见过古腾堡圣经，便会永生难忘。它宛如一件珠宝。

One of the defining attributes of an innovator is an ability to combine various previous inventions and harness them into a new product through a process of trial and error. Much is made of the engineering genius of the printing press, not to mention its efficiency: Gutenberg could print several bibles in the time it took a scribe to write one. The bibles were also exquisite to look at and to touch. His designs were clear, crisp, and eye-catching. Quite probably, Gutenberg’s background as a goldsmith working with precious metals influenced his attention to detail. Once you saw a Gutenberg Bible you would never forget it. It felt like jewelry.

这位发明家曾观察过美因茨附近的当地人用大型压榨机酿造葡萄酒。压榨机将葡萄放入大桶中，通过机械螺旋推进器向下压榨，确保所有葡萄同时受到相同的压力。这是一种古老的罗马技术。或许，在摩泽尔河畔的葡萄园里小酌几杯后，古腾堡灵光一闪，想到了阿基米德时刻。在此之前，印刷机经常出现墨迹晕染的情况，因为印刷时无法均匀地对页面上的所有字母施加相同的压力。为什么不将葡萄酒压榨技术应用到他的印刷机上呢？如果美因茨不是金属加工业和葡萄酒生产中心，古腾堡还能想到这个解决方案吗？

The innovator had watched the locals around Mainz make wine with large presses that squeezed the grapes in vats, pushing down the press via a mechanical corkscrew that ensured all the grapes were pressed at the same time and with the same pressure. This was an old Roman technology. Perhaps, after a few glasses in a Moselle vineyard, Gutenberg experienced his Archimedes moment. Until then, printers had constantly smudged the ink because they didn’t apply the same pressure on all the letters across a page consistently. Why not adapt the wine press technology for his printing machine? If Mainz hadn’t been a hub of both metalwork and wine production, would Gutenberg have arrived at this solution?

创新往往源于多种因素的汇合，这些因素决定了创新产生的原因和地点。美因茨和佛罗伦萨一样，都是经济活动的中心，这主要得益于其位于莱茵河畔的地理位置，莱茵河在此与摩泽尔河和美因河交汇。美因茨拥有资本，如果没有这些资本，常年破产的古腾堡根本无法为他的机器提供资金。印刷机是一套昂贵的设备。它拥有精密的铸铁部件和可移动的字模，这台复杂的机器需要雄厚的资金。一套完整的印刷字母的价格相当于普通工匠四到十年的工资。^事实上，印刷字母的技术被认为如此珍贵，以至于当古腾堡的一位商业伙伴去世时，约翰内斯派仆人到他家拆卸印刷机，取回他的零件，并“销毁他们合作的证据”。以免这些材料落入他的继承人手中。” ⁵如果没有年金和市政债券的爆炸式增长，储蓄得以循环利用，并为像古腾堡这样的冒险家提供了投资资本，印刷机不太可能在当时从德国出现。

Innovation tends to emerge from a confluence of factors that determine why and where an innovation develops. Mainz, like Florence, was a cluster of economic activity, largely based on its location on the Rhine, at the point where it connects with the Moselle and Main rivers. Mainz had capital, and without this, the perennially bankrupt Gutenberg would never have financed his machinery. The printing press was an expensive piece of kit. With its intricate iron casting and moveable typeface, the complex machine demanded deep pockets. A complete set of manufactured letters cost the equivalent of four to ten years’ wages of the average artisan.⁴ In fact, the technique for making the letters was considered so valuable that when one of Gutenberg’s business partners died, Johannes sent a servant around to his home to dismantle the press, retrieve his components, and “destroy the evidence of their collaboration, lest these materials fall into the hands of his heirs.”⁵ Without the explosion in annuities and municipal bonds that recycled savings and made investment capital available for adventurers like Gutenberg, it is unlikely that the printing press would have come from Germany when it did.

嗡嗡声

The buzz

印刷术的出现激发了公众辩论的活力，点燃了人们对知识的渴望。知识越丰富的公民越健谈。印刷术的经济影响显而易见：书籍的总体需求开始飙升，随着需求的增长，价格下降。规模经济效应开始显现。需求的增加带动了供应的增加。美因茨的印刷商全力运转，降低成本，赚取利润，并以更低的价格供应更多的书籍。1450年至1500年间，书籍价格下降了三分之二。1455年，约翰内斯印刷了他的第一本圣经，当时一本书的价格相当于大约100天的平均工资。到了1600年，一本书的价格甚至不到一天的工资。印刷术改变了我们的思维方式。^识字的人可以独自阅读印刷书籍，将​​其作为一种个人活动，这种个人学习方式使得人们能够进行更深入的思考和分析。

The printing press electrified public debate, unleashing a thirst for knowledge. Better-informed citizens are garrulous citizens. The financial implications of the printing press were obvious: the general demand for books began to soar and as demand rose, prices fell. Economies of scale kicked in. More demand drove more supply. The Mainz printers operated at full tilt, keeping costs down, pocketing profits, and supplying more books more cheaply. Between 1450 and 1500, the price of books fell by two thirds. In 1455, when Johannes printed his first bible, the price of a book amounted to about 100 days’ average wages. By 1600, a book cost less than one day’s worth of wages.⁶ Printing would change the way we thought. Literate people could read a printed book on their own, as a solitary pursuit, and this individual study allowed for deeper reflection and analysis.

一种革命性的新设计横空出世：小册子。这种单方面的论战性宣传品可以快速翻阅、迅速消化，并由识字的城镇公告员在集市广场上宣读，从而将思想传播给当时仍以文盲为主的民众。印刷术不仅改变了我们的思维方式，也改变了我们的工作方式。有了印刷术，商人或许第一次体验到了机械化生产带来的生产力提升的神奇力量。印刷厂是工业生产工厂模式的雏形之一。商人正逐步转型为实业家，而古腾堡的印刷作坊则谱写了工业革命的开篇之章。印刷机也为经济学引入了第三个关键生产要素：资本。它是最早深刻影响工人生产力、提高人均利润（资本主义的源泉）的机器之一。书籍也改变了劳动方式，从体力劳动转变为技术劳动，开启了熟练工人和非熟练工人之间的分化进程。资本主义和熟练劳动力这两项发展，都将在未来几个世纪对社会和政治产生深远的影响。

A revolutionary new design entered the scene: the pamphlet. A one-sided polemic that could be turned around quickly, digested swiftly, and read out in the market square by a literate town crier, the pamphlet disseminated ideas to a population that was still largely illiterate. Printing didn’t only change our way of thinking; it changed our way of working. With printing, the merchant was exposed, maybe for the first time, to the magic of productivity gains derived from mechanized production. Printing works were among the very first iteration of what would become the factory model of industrial production. The merchant was on his way to becoming an industrialist and Gutenberg’s workshop wrote the opening sentences of the story that would become the industrial revolution. The printing press also introduced a third key factor of production into economics: capital. It was one of the first examples of a machine that profoundly affected the productivity of workers, boosting profitability per worker, the fount of all capitalism. Books also changed labor from sweat to skill, beginning the process of differentiation in workers between skilled and unskilled industrial labor. Both these developments—capitalism and skilled labor—would have profound impacts on society and politics in the centuries ahead.

各市镇联合起来购买印刷机。印刷机的建立与随后的经济增长之间的联系显而易见。1500年至1600年间，在15世纪末期建立印刷厂的欧洲城市，其经济增长速度比没有印刷厂的城市快60%。^思想自由与商业自由相辅相成。一旦拥有了印刷机，德国和欧洲其他一些此前不具备工业、贸易或金融优势的城市，便经历了更高的经济增长水平和识字率的激增。人们如饥似渴地阅读书籍、小册子和期刊，明显偏爱动物学、解剖学和植物学等新兴的、面向未来的学科。

Municipalities pooled resources to buy printing presses. The link between the establishment of a printing press and subsequent economic growth is unambiguous. Between 1500 and 1600, European cities with printing works established in the late fifteenth century grew 60 percent faster than cities without printworks.⁷ Intellectual freedom and commercial freedom went hand in hand. Once they got a printing press, cities in Germany and other parts of Europe that had no prior industrial, trading, or financial advantage experienced higher levels of economic growth and a surge in literacy. People devoured books, pamphlets, and journals, displaying a clear bias for new, future-looking pursuits like zoology, anatomy, and botany.

这对教师和所有从事教育工作的人来说都是好消息。大学教授的平均薪水在五十年内从与普通熟练工匠持平涨到了后者的两倍。人们对未来和科学发展的可能性充满了浓厚的兴趣。我们可以从十六世纪早期各类教授的薪资水平中看出这种差异。教授科学、数学和天文学的教师比教授法律、神学、修辞学、语法、诗歌和希腊语的教师获得了更高的薪酬增长。

This was good news for teachers and anyone working in education. The average university professor saw his salary rise from the same as the average skilled artisan to twice that in fifty years. People’s interest in tomorrow and the possibilities of science took off. We can see this bias in the salaries of various types of professors during the early sixteenth century. Those teaching the sciences, maths, and astronomy enjoyed larger pay increases than professors of law, theology, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, and Greek.

如同十四世纪的意大利一样，自十六世纪起，德国成为欧洲创新和思想的中心——从伯麦到黑格尔，途经莱布尼茨、沃尔夫和康德。德国之所以能够有效地传播信息并早期采用商业和技术创新，是因为晚期神圣罗马帝国是由众多分散的小城市和领土组成的网络，彼此之间为了争夺声望而相互竞争。如果德国是一个权力垂直集中的庞大统一帝国，中央政府很可能就会进行审查。印刷术具有制造革命性材料的潜在潜力，因此很可能会受到更严格的监控和控制。中国人早在古腾堡之前几个世纪就掌握了印刷术，但他们的官员们对任何可能动摇中央权威的技术都保持着高度警惕，因此迅速阻止了印刷术的传播，并坚决审查煽动性材料。而在德国，并不存在这样的中央政府。地图上多中心的格局，以及相互竞争的城市和城镇，为思想和商业上的叛乱提供了完美的温床。一切就绪。

Much as Italy had been in the fourteenth century, Germany from the sixteenth century on became the fulcrum of European innovation and thought—from Böhme to Hegel, via Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant. Germany was suited to the dissemination of information and early adoption of commercial and technological innovations because the late Holy Roman Empire was a decentralized network of small cities and territories elbowing each other for prestige. Had Germany been one large, unified empire with a vertical structure of power, there would likely have been censorship from central government. The printing press, with its potential for producing revolutionary material, would probably have been monitored and controlled more closely. The Chinese had figured out printing centuries before Gutenberg but their mandarins, ever alert to a technology that might undermine the authority of the center, were quick to shut down the diffusion of printing presses and adamant about censoring incendiary materials. In Germany there was no center. The polycentric nature of the map, with its competing cities and towns, was the perfect breeding ground for intellectual and mercantile sedition. The scene was set.

路德

Luther

印刷术这项金融创新，在十五世纪中期为教会提供了资金，却在十六世纪将其撕裂。马丁·路德是印刷术的产物，但他也是金钱的产物。

Printing, the financial innovation that financed the Church in the mid-fifteenth century, would be the one that tore it apart in the sixteenth century. Martin Luther was a product of the printing press. But he was also a product of money.

他在萨克森州的银矿区长大，他的父亲是一位矿业企业家，他的兄弟和三个姐夫也是如此。采矿是一项成本高昂的生意，当地开采矿藏的人们创建了一种名为“gewerk”的早期股份公司，以支付不断上涨的前期资本成本。矿山挖得越深，成本就越高。路德家族和其他股东一样，在开工前就进行了投资。每个季度，投资者要么追加投资以维持矿山运营，要么根据其持股比例获得收益。到了15世纪90年代，这些股份开始产生回报，以大枚高品质银币的形式出现。马丁·路德本人也持有部分矿业股份。然而，大约在1500年至1530年间，可能是由于过度勘探造成的，采矿业的萧条引发了信贷紧缩，并导致萨克森地区出现严重的经济衰退。路德家族遭受了经济损失，而教会^却继续通过出售赎罪券敛财。银矿主们突然境况的恶化与教会持续的奢华之间的这种巨大反差，是否至少在一定程度上激起了路德的愤慨？

He grew up in the silver-mining area of Saxony and his father was a mining entrepreneur, as were his brother and three brothers-in-law. Mining was an expensive business and the locals who started mining created a gewerk—an early type of joint stock company—to pay for increasing up-front capital costs. The deeper into the mountain you dig, the more expensive the process. The Luther family, like other shareholders, invested before the digging started. Every quarter, investors either paid in more to keep the mine going or were given a payout in proportion to the shares they owned. In the 1490s, these shares began to generate returns in large, high-quality silver coins.⁸ Martin Luther himself held some mining shares. However, between roughly 1500 and 1530, possibly as a result of too much prospecting, a mining slump prompted a credit crunch and severe regional depression in Saxony. The Luther family suffered financially while the Church continued to enrich itself creating money from indulgences. Could it have been this disparity between the sudden reduced circumstances of the silver mine owners and the ongoing opulence of the Church that, at least in part, prompted Luther’s indignation?

他的抗议恰逢梵蒂冈发起的一场声势浩大的敲诈勒索。1517年10月，一场兜售赎罪券的巡回演出席卷萨克森，兜售着可以免除炼狱之苦的赎罪券，而这些钱据称将用于重建罗马的圣彼得大教堂。然而，其中一部分钱实际上是落入了富格尔银行家族（相当于德国的梅第奇家族）的口袋，因为古腾堡的老上司——美因茨大主教的继任者——欠了他们21000杜卡特。这位大主教用这笔钱贿赂教皇，获得了主教的职位。主教是神圣罗马帝国皇帝仅有的七个选帝侯之一，地位极其重要。金钱、银行、贿赂、腐败、谎言和救赎：这几种因素交织在一起，足以激怒像路德这样的人。

The timing of his protest coincided with a monumental Vatican-run shakedown. In October 1517, an indulgence-selling road show rolled into Saxony, offering get-out-of-purgatory pardons in exchange for money that would supposedly be used to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. However, some of that money was actually intended for the Fugger banking family (Germany’s equivalent to the Medicis), who were owed 21,000 ducats by the successor to Gutenberg’s old boss, the Archbishop of Mainz. He had used the money to bribe the pope to grant him the bishopric, a valuable post because it was one of only seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. Money, banking, bribery, corruption, lies, and salvation: a cocktail to trigger a man like Luther.

他的第一篇帖子——于1517年万圣节前夜钉在维滕贝格大教堂的大门上——是用要点而非句子印刷的，因为简短的要点可以用古腾堡印刷机快速重印。路德的观点是引发讨论的引子，而非最终结论，这使得其他人可以参与到辩论中来。

His first post—nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral on All Hallows’ Eve, 1517—was printed in bullet points rather than sentences because a short set of bullet points could be quickly reprinted on Gutenberg’s machinery. Luther’s points were conversation starters rather than definitive conclusions, allowing others to get involved in the debate.

《九十五条论纲》一夜之间风靡全球。印刷术的出现打破了这一局面，使路德得以将他对罗马天主教会的批判从修道院的幽深堡垒带到熙熙攘攘的市场。教会高层即将感受到这种传播网络的力量。到1517年底，《九十五条论纲》已在莱比锡、纽伦堡和巴塞尔等地印刷再版。路德的著作数量惊人。他撰写了十三部论著，在1517年至1521年间售出超过30万册^。

The “Ninety-five Theses” were an overnight sensation. The printing press was the disruption that allowed Luther to take his war against the Roman Catholic Church from the cloistered tower to the crowded market. The hierarchy was about to feel the power of the network. By the end of 1517, copies of the theses were being printed and reprinted in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Basel. Luther’s literary output was immense. He wrote thirteen treatises which sold over 300,000 copies between 1517 and 1521.⁹

他的小册子是用德语而非拉丁语写成的，旨在朗读。它们通常只有六到八页，便于阅读和藏匿。小册子里有插图，描绘了猥琐的僧侣、肥胖的主教和腐败好色的教皇的丑恶漫画。这些小册子旨在震惊世人，同时也引人发笑，是路德及其反叛者最常用的武器。

His pamphlets were written to be read out loud, in German rather than Latin. They were usually six to eight pages long, which made them easy to digest, and easy to hide. They contained drawings, vile caricatures of sleazy monks, corpulent bishops, and corrupt lusty popes. Designed to shock as well as make people laugh, the pamphlet was the weapon of choice for Luther and his rebels.

随着时间的推移，他的反罗马思想传播开来，他的叛逆牧师们开始在城市教区和较大的自由城市中获得职位，巩固了这一网络。路德作为创始人，处于中心地位，不断提出各种思想，而牧师网络则将这些思想传达给他们的信众，信众们又将这些思想传播开来。每一次讨论，无论是在客栈的后屋、收费公路旁、集市广场，还是在工匠行会中，都要求那些此前从未被征询过意见的人参与，而他们的意见除了天气之外，几乎与任何事都无关。这种被强制参与的感觉，让他们感受到了一种群体参与的氛围。妻子们与丈夫交谈，面包师与屠夫争论，金匠与放债人辩论。话题围绕着人生、道德、来世以及救赎等永恒问题展开。

In time, his anti-Roman ideas spread, and his rebel pastors began gaining positions in urban parishes and larger free cities, consolidating the network. Luther, the creator, was at the center, churning out ideas, and the network of pastors were communicating these thoughts to their congregations, who in turn spread the word. Each discussion, whether in the back of an inn, at a toll turnpike, in the market square, or among the artisans’ guilds, mandated people who had never previously been asked their opinion of anything but the weather. Being mandated would have given the feeling of group participation. Wives talked to husbands, bakers argued with butchers, goldsmiths with moneylenders. The topics centered on the eternal questions of life, morality, the afterlife, and, of course, salvation.

路德的成名作是《论赎罪券与恩典》，这本书用萨克森到莱茵兰一带的德语写成，通俗易懂。仅在1518年，这本书就重印了十四次。据估计，1517年至1530年间，印刷的小册子多达七百万册，其中超过四分之一出自路德之手。这位牧师在出版界引起了轰动，而成功往往会带来更多成功，所有新兴出版商都想出版他的作品——路德的著作足以让印刷厂忙得不可开交。

Luther’s breakout publication was his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace,” written in a German that everyone from Saxony to the Rhineland could understand. It was reprinted fourteen times in 1518 alone. It is estimated that 7 million pamphlets were printed in the period from 1517 to 1530, and more than one quarter of these were penned by Luther. The priest was a publishing sensation, and as success begets success, every up-and-coming publisher wanted to publish him—a Lutheran missive would keep the printworks busy.

这并非完全出于道德考量；金钱也是推动新教发展的重要因素。这种新宗教的一大吸引力在于，皈依新教的君主可以掠夺旧宗教的财产。英国的亨利八世，也被称为“大腐败者”，是一位理财能力极差的君主，他发现没收教会土地的想法极具诱惑力。德国各地的国王和诸侯纷纷效仿亨利，侵占教会财产。对于一位破产的国王而言，新教就像中了彩票一样。而对于地方诸侯来说，没收教会土地则是一条稳赚不赔的快速致富之路。谁会拒绝这样的机会呢？

It wasn’t all about morals; money also drove Protestantism. A major attraction of this new religion was that a converting monarch could steal the assets of the old religion. England’s Henry VIII, known also as the Great Debaser, a very poor money manager, found the idea of confiscating Church lands extremely tempting. Kings and princelings all over Germany followed Henry’s example, expropriating Church property. From the perspective of a bankrupt king, Protestantism was like winning the lottery. And for the local prince, confiscating Church land was a surefire get-rich-quick scheme. Who wouldn’t go for such an option?

在教会等级制度的较低层级，金钱也发挥了作用。路德偶然发现了一种比购买赎罪券更便宜的救赎之道。通过过着良好的生活，得救者可以避免缴纳用于购买赎罪券的税款，却依然能获得同样的救赎。你几乎可以说，新教本身就是一种避税策略！

Money also played a part lower down the hierarchy. Luther had stumbled on a cheaper way to salvation than buying indulgences. By living a good life, the saved could avoid the tax that was paying for an indulgence and yet guarantee the same outcome. You could almost say Protestantism was a tax-avoidance strategy!

这种反叛的宗教在另一个根本方面也与旧式基督教决裂：新教。他们推崇通过辛勤工作和行善积德来获取财富，并积极投身于事业。对于加尔文主义者这种激进的新教信徒来说，富有和储蓄甚至是命中注定要进入天堂的标志。这种解读彻底颠覆了基督教传统的金钱、财富和贫穷观念。可以说，从此金钱也有了宗教意义。

The rebel religion constituted a break from older forms of Christianity in another fundamental way: Protestantism celebrated acquiring money through hard work and good deeds, and involving oneself in enterprise. For Calvinists, with their radical brand of Protestantism, being rich and saving wealth were even earthly signs of your predestined place in heaven. This interpretation flipped traditional Christian thinking about money, wealth, and poverty on its head. It could be said that from now on money had a religion.

在德国，一座又一座城市皈依了新教，印刷术在其中发挥了至关重要的作用。拥有至少一台印刷机的城市比没有印刷机的城市更容易改信新教，而拥有多家印刷机的城市则更有可能改信新教。路德^四处巡回演讲，并孜孜不倦地写信。维滕贝格是这场革命的中心，一个煽动叛乱的学院，叛逆的牧师们前来聆听这位大师的教诲。这些信徒深受路德激进思想的影响，回到新皈依新教的自由城市传播福音。

In Germany, city after city flipped Protestant and the printing press played a crucial role. Cities with at least one printing press were more likely to convert than those without, while cities with multiple competing presses were even more likely to turn Protestant.¹⁰ Luther went on the circuit giving lectures, and wrote letters relentlessly. Wittenberg was ground zero for the revolution, an academy of sedition, where rebellious priests came to hear the maestro in person. Infused with his radical message, these disciples headed back to the newly converted free cities to spread the message.

海事资金

Maritime money

1519年秋，马丁·路德正忙于撰写他的小册子，此时，两位人物的一次会面改变了人类历史的进程。27年前，克里斯托弗·哥伦布为了追逐金钱，特别是中国的财富，意外地发现了美洲。在随后的几年里，形形色色的西班牙独立冒险家横渡大西洋，寻找财富，尤其是黄金——而他们也确实找到了大量的黄金。1519年11月8日清晨，西班牙文员出身的征服者埃尔南·科尔特斯沿着堤道走去，第一次见到了蒙特祖玛二世。阿兹特克帝国皇帝蒙特祖玛曾向欧洲人赠送礼物并热情款待；但可以说，中美洲人对西班牙人的慷慨并没有得到回报，无论当时还是之后。这次会面后的几个月内，欧洲人便开始摧毁伟大的阿兹特克城市特诺奇蒂特兰，杀害了蒙特祖玛并奴役了他的人民。

In the autumn of 1519, as Martin Luther was cranking out his pamphlets, a meeting occurred between two men that would change the course of human history. Twenty-seven years earlier, in pursuit of money, specifically Chinese money, Christopher Columbus had accidentally stumbled upon the Americas. In the subsequent years, all sorts of independent Spanish adventurers set off across the Atlantic in search of their fortunes and, in particular, in search of gold—which they found in enormous quantities. On the morning of November 8, 1519, Hernán Cortés, a Spanish clerk turned conquistador, walked up a causeway to meet, for the first time, Moctezuma II, the emperor of the Aztecs. Moctezuma bestowed gifts and hospitality upon the Europeans; it’s fair to say that the generosity of the Meso-Americans toward the Spaniards was not reciprocated, either then or ever. Within months of this meeting, the Europeans set about destroying the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, killing Moctezuma and enslaving his people.

人们提出了许多理由来解释为什么西班牙人在技术上比阿兹特克人更先进。欧洲人拥有船只、枪支、车轮和钢铁。他们还有指南针、地图、马匹、大炮、令美洲人胆寒的恶犬，而且，或许最重要的是，他们对多种足以摧毁当地人的疾病免疫，包括天花和流感。这两个文明在这次决定命运的相遇中展现出的巨大技术差距，被形容为文艺复兴时期的欧洲与苏美尔人的正面交锋。 ¹¹历史学家将中美洲文明相对落后的原因归结为多种结构性因素，例如欧洲人定居务农的时间更长，从而发展出更庞大的定居人口和城市人口。然而，很少有人提及的是，阿兹特克人当时只有非常原始的货币形式。

Many reasons have been given to explain why the Spaniards were more technologically advanced than the Aztecs. In their tool kit, the Europeans had ships, guns, wheels, and steel. They also had compasses, maps, horses, cannons, vicious dogs that terrified the Americans, and, maybe most significant, they had immunity to a variety of diseases that would decimate the locals, including smallpox and the flu. The yawning technological gap evident at this fateful meeting between two civilizations has been described as Renaissance Europe coming face-to-face with the Sumerians.¹¹ Historians put the relative underdevelopment of the Meso-American civilization down to a variety of structural causes, such as the Europeans being settled farmers for a much longer period, allowing greater settled and urbanized populations to develop. Rarely mentioned, however, is the fact that the Aztecs had only a very rudimentary form of money.

正如我们所观察到的，货币是创新的强大推动力。阿兹特克文明缺乏完善的货币和金融体系，这是否可以解释为什么欧洲人在技术上遥遥领先？与阿兹特克人卓越的农业技术、毋庸置疑的建筑和数学才能形成鲜明对比的是，他们的货币形式相当原始：他们使用易腐烂的可可豆进行小额交易。有证据表明，尽管他们贸易往来频繁，但他们主要依靠物物交换、赠礼和贡品来进行交易。与此同时，无论是在中美洲还是在东美洲，欧洲人都拥有完善的货币体系。几年后，北美地区继承了可追溯至苏美尔时代的货币实验传统，并自吕底亚时代起就开始使用硬币。在试图解释新旧世界之间的差异时，货币无疑值得一提。

As we have been observing, money is a great enabler of innovation. Could the absence of a well-developed system of money and finance in Aztec civilization explain why the Europeans were, technologically, so far ahead? In contrast to their agricultural prowess and undoubted architectural and mathematical abilities, the Aztecs had a pretty elementary form of money: they were using perishable cocoa beans for small transactions. Evidence suggests that, although they traded intensively, they relied on a system of bartering, gifting, and tributes to do this. Meanwhile, the Europeans—whether in Meso-America or some years later in North America—were the recipients of a tradition of monetary experimentation that stretched back to the Sumerian era, and had been using coins since the time of the Lydians. In trying to explain the differences between the New and Old Worlds, money surely deserves a mention.

阿兹特克人或许没有复杂的货币体系，但他们拥有大量的金银，西班牙人掠夺了他们所能得到的一切。据估计，16世纪欧洲金银总量是1493年的五倍。12^支满载金银的庞大武装舰队从新大陆驶往西班牙，这些舰队由自由职业的投机者资助。这些武装的奸商，也就是征服者，对美洲进行了大规模的掠夺。

The Aztecs might not have had sophisticated money, but they did have gold and silver, lots of both, and the Spaniards grabbed what they could. One estimate suggests that during the 1500s, the total stock of European gold and silver was five times bigger than it had been in 1493.¹² Vast armed armadas laden down with bullion left the New World for Spain, financed by freelance opportunists. Armed profiteers, the conquistadors, plundered the Americas wholesale.

西班牙人肆意掠夺新大陆的矿藏，但他们对金银的狂热不过是对过去的缅怀；未来的货币将是一种新型货币——纸币，以及与之相伴的股票和债券市场。沉重的金银条块曾是西班牙战船的沉重负担，如今已成为历史；未来将是商人手中轻如鸿毛的纸币。

The Spaniards were ransacking the mines of the New World, but this mania for gold and silver was a celebration of the past; the future of money would be a new form of money, paper money, with its financial handmaidens, the stock and bond markets. Money in the form of heavy bullion weighing down the stout Spanish galleys was history; the future would be featherlight paper in the hands of merchants.

商业和殖民主义的新时代来临，海洋为世界敞开了大门。与那些拥有广袤陆地的国家相比，沿海国家抢占了先机，获得了巨大的经济利益。到了十七世纪，欧洲最小的国家荷兰成为了最大的赢家。

A new age of commerce and colonialism was upon us and the oceans opened up the world. Maritime nations, rather than those with large landmasses, stole a financial march. By the seventeenth century, Holland, the smallest country in Europe, was the biggest winner.

一位不速之客

An unexpected visitor

1697年，俄国沙皇彼得大帝乔装成一名水手，抵达了当时世界上最富有的城市。阿姆斯特丹建于沼泽地之上，是一座自由城市，拥有优雅的住宅、商业码头和繁忙的运河网络，其部分资金来自蓬勃发展的股票市场。这座贸易之都建立在基督教新教和商业的双重信仰之上。它接纳异见人士和宗教难民，拥有当时世界上最大的商船队，并构成了一个商业帝国的核心，这个帝国的疆域从荷兰延伸至开普敦、桑给巴尔、马六甲、苏里南，直至纽约——当时被称为荷兰贸易前哨新阿姆斯特丹。阿姆斯特丹的港口，数百根桅杆直插阴沉的低地天空，是这座城市的堡垒，也是荷兰权力的源泉。

In 1697, disguised as a ship’s mate, the Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great, arrived in the richest city in the world. Built on marshland, Amsterdam was a free city of elegant houses, commercial quays, and a network of busy canals, financed partly by a thriving stock market. This trading city was founded on the twin religions of Protestantism and commerce. Welcoming dissenters and religious refugees, it was home to the largest merchant navy in the world and formed the beating heart of a mercantile empire that stretched from Holland to Cape Town, Zanzibar, and Malacca, Suriname to New York City, then known as the Dutch trading outpost New Amsterdam. Its harbor, with hundreds of masts piercing the overcast lowland sky, was its citadel, the source of Dutch power.

俄罗斯人，尤其是内陆城市莫斯科人，对海洋知之甚少，但彼得大帝深知世界正在发生变化。了解海洋的人懂得贸易，他们在商业上逐渐超越其他国家——先是16世纪的葡萄牙，然后是荷兰。十七世纪末，这两个海上强国都沿着贸易路线改写了世界版图，在大西洋沿岸的非洲、好望角附近、印度洋沿岸以及更东边的亚洲等关键地点建立了贸易据点。他们成功地完成了环球航行，避开了奥斯曼帝国对陆上丝绸之路的控制。如今崛起的荷兰人参与了一场全球套利游戏，他们从东方低价购入胡椒、肉桂和其他香料等商品，然后在西方高价出售，从中赚取差价。

Russians, particularly landlocked Muscovites, had little knowledge of the sea, but Peter knew that the world was changing. People who understood the sea understood trade, and they were pulling ahead commercially from the rest—first Portugal in the sixteenth century and then Holland by the end of the seventeenth. Both maritime powers had rewritten the map of the world, following the trade routes, each creating trading outposts at critical points in Atlantic Africa, around the Cape, up the Indian Ocean, and further east to Asia. They had managed to circumnavigate the globe, avoiding the Ottoman stranglehold on the overland Silk Roads. The now-ascendant Dutch were involved in a global game of arbitrage, sourcing and buying items—like pepper, cinnamon, and other spices—cheaply in the East and selling expensively in the West, pocketing the difference.

俄罗斯逐渐落后，这让年轻的罗曼诺夫沙皇十分不满。为了揭开荷兰成功的秘诀，彼得在著名的造船厂获得了一份为期四个月的实习机会。在那里，他边观察边学习，吸收着阿姆斯特丹的一切。这位世界最大的地主前往世界最大的造船厂，学习造船的门道。他秘密住在一间简陋的木匠小屋里，自己铺床，穿上荷兰木匠的服装，像当地人一样生活。实习结束后，他那位信奉加尔文教的导师评价他“是一位技艺精湛的好木匠” ^。

Russia was being left behind and this didn’t sit well with the young Romanov tsar. Determined to unlock the secrets of Holland’s success, Peter landed a four-month internship at the famed shipyards and from there he watched and learned, absorbing everything that Amsterdam had to offer. The world’s largest landowner traveled to the world’s largest shipbuilder to learn the ropes. Undercover, he lived in a tiny wooden artisan’s house, where he made his own bed, donned the garb of a Dutch carpenter, and lived like a local. When he had finished his internship, his Calvinist supervisor noted he was “a good and skilful carpenter.”¹

他在阿姆斯特丹的这段经历改变了他的人生，也改变了俄罗斯和欧洲的历史。建造新都城时，沙皇以荷兰首都为蓝本，甚至连城市名称都取自荷兰语“圣彼得堡”（Sankt Pieter Burkh），而非俄语。俄罗斯最伟大的城市效仿了欧洲最伟大的城市：它建在沼泽地上，围绕运河而建。彼得大帝被阿姆斯特丹的商业和文化活力所深深吸引，邀请外国人到圣彼得堡投资兴业。

His stay in Amsterdam would change his life and the history of both Russia and Europe. When he built his new capital city, the tsar modeled it on the Dutch capital, even taking a Dutch name, “Sankt Pieter Burkh,” rather than a Russian equivalent. The greatest city in Russia imitated the greatest city in Europe: it was built on marshes and shaped around canals. Struck by the commercial and cultural vibrancy of cosmopolitan Amsterdam, Peter invited foreigners to set up shop in St. Petersburg.

这位统治着当时世界最大陆地帝国的专制君主，并非一个循规蹈矩之人。据他的一位传记作者所述，沙皇是一位^{身材魁梧、}气势逼人的巨人。他嗜酒如命，风流成性，据说闲暇之余还热衷于进行尸检。彼得一世警惕着自己圈子里的叛徒，却对荷兰人缺乏隐私和对安全漠不关心的态度感到震惊。富有的俄罗斯人把自己封闭在戒备森严的堡垒之后；相比之下，富有的荷兰银行家、商人和律师却住在拥有巨大透明窗户的豪宅里，与平民百姓的视线完全交汇。这让沙皇觉得极其现代。不同阶层的人如此亲近地摩肩接踵，对于一个拥有比世界上任何人都多的奴隶的人来说，想必是难以接受的。

The autocratic overlord of the largest land empire in the world was not a man hemmed in by convention. According to one of his biographers,² the tsar was an imposing giant of a man who drank copiously, philandered indiscreetly, and in the rest of his free time is rumored to have enjoyed carrying out autopsies. Alert to treason within his own circle, Peter was amazed at the lack of privacy and nonchalant attitude to security he found in Holland. Wealthy Russians barricaded themselves behind militarized fortresses; in contrast, rich Dutch bankers, merchants, and lawyers lived in homes with huge clear windows in full gaze of the commoners. This struck the tsar as extremely modern. The apparent social proximity of different classes rubbing shoulders must have been unsettling for a man who owned more slaves than anyone else in the world.

和许多俄罗斯人一样，彼得大帝对西欧的文明和科技实力既印象深刻又感到不安。这种将西方视为灯塔和威胁的矛盾心理，长期以来一直是俄罗斯知识分子面临的难题。多年来，雄心勃勃的俄罗斯领导人常常接受西方的一些表面特征，但却对西方自由政治可能给当权者带来的深层次不便避之不及。彼得大帝回到俄罗斯后，坚持要求俄罗斯贵族剃掉长须，采用西式服饰，并像勤劳谦逊的荷兰市民那样行事，而不是像他们原本那样拥有农奴的贵族。那些他不认同的荷兰制度，例如荷兰国王对议会的绝对服从，都被他留在了阿姆斯特尔河畔。

Like many Russians, Peter the Great was both impressed and unnerved by western European sophistication and technological prowess. This conflict between seeing the West as a beacon and a threat has long been a conundrum for Russian intellectuals. As has been the case for many years, ambitious Russian leaders regularly embrace cosmetic Western characteristics, but balk at the deeper inconveniences actual Western liberal politics can impose on the powerful. On his return to Russia, Peter insisted that Russian aristocracy shave their long beards, adopt Western fashion, and behave more like modest, hardworking Dutch burghers, rather than the serf-owning aristocracy that they were. Those parts of the Dutch setup that didn’t appeal to him, such as the Hollander king’s subservience to the country’s parliament, were left on the banks of the Amstel.

尽管彼得渴望荷兰资金带来的成果——创新、财富和海军实力——但他并不太热衷于荷兰当权派为了实现这些目标而做出的民主和制度上的妥协。鼓励辩论和接纳那些可能在所有事情上都与你意见相左的人并不适合他，但有时候，没有这些妥协，就无法实现这些目标。另一方面，异议和创造力往往能促进商业企业的伟大冒险。荷兰人的宽容、财富和金融才能似乎是密不可分的。

Although Peter wanted the fruits of Dutch money—the innovation, the wealth, the naval power—he wasn’t too keen on the democratic and institutional compromises the Dutch establishment made to achieve them. Encouraging debate and accepting people who might not agree with you on everything wasn’t for him, but sometimes you can’t have one without the other. Dissent and creativity often contribute to the great adventure of commercial enterprise. Dutch tolerance, Dutch wealth, and Dutch financial genius appeared to go together.

鉴于十七世纪阿姆斯特丹的商业活力和精明的理财之道，一位好奇而富有开拓精神的俄罗斯君主会秘密造访荷兰首都，探寻财富的秘密，也就不足为奇了。荷兰令人费解。一个如此小的国家，为何能拥有如此强大的实力和繁荣，而像俄罗斯这样幅员辽阔的国家却依然贫穷？在俄罗斯的世界里，强权即真理，而力量又源于规模。这个小国是如何崛起成为欧洲商业中心的？究竟是什么魔法在起作用？无论荷兰人喝的是什么，彼得大帝都想尝尝。

Given seventeenth-century Amsterdam’s commercial energy and dexterity with money, is it any wonder that a curious and pioneering Russian monarch would arrive in the Dutch capital incognito looking to unearth the secrets of wealth? Holland was perplexing. How could a country so small have this power and prosperity when a country as large as Russia was poor? In the Russian world, might was right and power required scale. How did this tiny country emerge at the center of European commerce? What alchemy was at work? Whatever the Dutch were drinking, Peter the Great wanted some.

轻如鸿毛的钱

Featherlight money

印刷术的出现催生了对纸张的需求，而纸张此前一直是神职人员和宫廷的专属；欧洲大多数普通民众在日常生活中几乎接触不到纸张或羊皮纸。古腾堡之后，情况发生了改变。人们渴望在纸上看到文字——海报、小册子、书籍和抄本。一个全新的生产流程应运而生，其中包括林业、碾磨、洗涤、漂白、制浆、拉伸和干燥。哪里有印刷机，哪里就有造纸厂。识字率在新时代的到来中迅速提高，人们开始探索和发现。如果教会可以被质疑，既定的宗教可以被取代，那么还有什么可以被挑战呢？如果纸张可以广泛用于宗教改革的煽动性小册子，那么它还能用于什么呢？

The printing press created a demand for paper, which had previously been the preserve of the clergy and court; most ordinary people in Europe would rarely have encountered paper or parchment in their daily lives. After Gutenberg, that changed. People wanted the written word on paper—posters, pamphlets, books, and copybooks. An entire new production process emerged involving forestry, milling, washing, bleaching, pulping, stretching, and drying. Where there were printing presses, there were paper mills. Literacy rates took off in a new age of inquiry and discovery. If the Church could be questioned and the established religion replaced, what else might be up for grabs? If paper could be used extensively for the Reformation’s incendiary pamphlets, what else could it be used for?

货币，以其各种形式，即将经历一场变革。这场对构成要素的彻底重新评估……货币的出现需要一些大胆的信念飞跃，其中最令人匪夷所思的莫过于认为一张纸可以代表远超其本身价值的价值。在此之前，我们已经见识过各种形式的货币：吕底亚金币、希腊银币、罗马铜币、银币和金币、德国银币以及金弗罗林。货币随后演变为信用证和德国年金，但这些始终与特定的商人、商业银行、市政当局或土地挂钩；从某种意义上说，信用证和年金具有“记忆”——它们可以追溯到特定的人或事物。

Money, in all its forms, was about to undergo its own sort of Reformation. This thoroughgoing reassessment of what constituted money required some major leaps of faith, and possibly the most gymnastic of these intellectual jumps was the notion that a piece of paper could represent value far above its intrinsic value. Up to this point, we have seen various forms of money: Lydian gold, Greek silver, Roman copper, silver, and gold, German silver, and the golden florin. Money then evolved into letters of credit and German annuities, but these were always tied to particular merchants, merchant banks, municipalities, or pieces of physical land; in a sense, letters of credit and annuities had a “memory”—they could be traced to somebody or something.

想象一下，一张纸代表着金钱，它没有记忆，除了对金钱本身及其发行机构的信任之外，没有任何其他痕迹。货币的下一个发展阶段将是纸币的普及：由中央银行发行的纸片，除了发行银行本身的信誉之外，无法追溯到任何人或任何事物。货币的这种演变需要社会的相应变革。它需要在素不相识的人们之间建立深厚的信任。而这正是荷兰人努力的方向。纸币将成为货币发展史上革命性的一章。凭借政府印章和精美的设计，一张普通的纸片就能神奇地变成金钱，成为买卖实物的法定货币。

Imagine a piece of paper representing money with no memory, no trace other than the faith in the money itself and the institution that prints it. The next iteration of money would be mass acceptance of paper money: pieces of paper issued by a centralized bank that could not be traced to anybody or anything except the credibility of that centralized bank, the issuer. Such an evolution in money required an evolution in society. It required deep levels of trust between people who did not know each other. And this is what the Dutch moved toward. Paper money would be a revolutionary chapter in the story of money. With a government stamp and an intricate design, a mere piece of paper can be magically transformed into money, legal tender to buy and sell real things.

与印刷术一样，纸币实际上早在几个世纪前就已在中国发明。最初，纸币，至少在街头巷尾，来源于当铺的收据。当铺将财产兑换成现金。中国人典当衣物或珠宝，当铺会给他们一张收据，上面写着典当物品的价值。然后，人们可以用这张收据兑换价值不超过收据上所写财产价值的物品。人们相信当铺对钱有信心。到了宋代（公元960-1279年），纸币流通迅速发展。它成为国家货币的主要流通媒介，协调国库与官僚机构之间​​的所有交易。这种货币采用四色铜版印刷在桑皮纸上——这是有史以来第一种采用这种技术生产的物品——可以反复流通而不会褪色或损坏。

As with printing, paper money had in fact been invented centuries before in China. Initially, paper money, at least at street level, derived from receipts of pawnshops. Pawnshops turned property into cash. People in China pawned their clothes or jewels and the pawnshop gave them a receipt, written to the value of the goods pawned. This receipt was then used to exchange goods up to the value of the property written on the paper. People understood the pawnshop was good for the money. During the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE), paper became the primary instrument of state money, mediating all transactions between the treasury and the bureaucracy. This money was printed on mulberry-bark paper using four-color copperplates—the first item ever produced using this technology—and could be passed from hand to hand without smudging or perishing.

在欧洲，由中央银行发行的纸币最早出现于1694年英国，当时英格兰银行成立。但如果没有几十年前在阿姆斯特丹奠定的基础，这一切都不可能发生。1609年，荷兰人建立了威塞尔银行（Wisselbank），这是一家由富商所有、持有皇家特许状的中央银行。为什么荷兰人率先建立了纸币发行机制？这正是彼得大帝提出的问题。

In Europe, paper money issued by a central bank first materialized in Britain in 1694 with the establishment of the Bank of England, but this could not have happened without the foundations that were laid in Amsterdam decades earlier. In 1609, the Dutch set up the Wisselbank, a centralized bank, owned by rich merchants, operating under a royal charter. Why the Dutch first? This was Peter the Great’s question.

荷兰出现维塞尔银行的原因有很多。小国往往受制于地理的局限。当国内市场规模较小时，小国快速发展的唯一途径就是通过贸易，在更大的地区获取市场份额。一旦一个小型开放经济体摆脱了地理限制，开始进行远超国界的贸易，它就面临着货币困境：如何处理这些从国外流入的新资金？如果贸易国不妥善管理这些新资金，其汇率就会上升，从而摧毁最初吸引资金流入的竞争力。（如今，像新加坡、爱尔兰和瑞士这样成功的小型贸易国也面临着类似的难题。）贸易经济体的货币经济学是一项平衡之举。

There are a number of reasons why the Wisselbank emerged in Holland. Small countries are hemmed in by the tyranny of geography. When the home market is small, the only way that small countries can grow quickly is by trade, acquiring market share in bigger regions. Once a small open economy breaks free of its geography and begins to trade way beyond its borders, it faces a monetary dilemma. What to do with this new money that is flowing in from abroad? If the trading state doesn’t manage this new money, its own exchange rate will rise, destroying the very competitiveness that brought the money in to begin with. (Today, small successful trading countries like Singapore, Ireland, and Switzerland face a similar conundrum.) Monetary economics in trading economies is a balancing act.

以荷兰为例，其商人在海外贸易越多，流入阿姆斯特丹的资金就越多。在十七世纪初，这些资金以各种硬币的形式存在——西班牙和英国的银币、佛罗伦萨弗罗林等等。此外还有大量的金银条块。贸易越多，货币种类就越多。为了使荷兰经济顺利运转，荷兰经济……荷兰需要一种由某个机构标准化的单一货币，而荷兰金融银行（Wisselbank）的一项职能就是吸收所有这些不同的硬币，并将它们兑换成荷兰货币——荷兰盾，荷兰盾由荷兰储备中的黄金作为后盾，以便在荷兰使用。

In the Dutch case, the more its merchants traded abroad, the more money flowed back into Amsterdam. In the early seventeenth century, this money would have been in the form of various coins—Spanish and British silver, Florentine florins, and so on. There would also be bulk bullion. The more trade, the more currencies. To function smoothly, the Dutch economy needed a single currency, standardized by some institution, and one function of the Wisselbank was to soak up all these various coins and swap them into the Dutch currency, the guilder, backed by the gold in its reserves so that the money could be used in Holland.

为海军筹集资金是建立威塞尔银行的另一个核心动机。尽管荷兰人与其他欧洲殖民者不同，他们更倾向于建立孤立的贸易据点而非大规模的领土征服，但枪支在荷兰商业扩张中无疑发挥了重要作用。荷兰国内常常称赞其宽容，但荷兰的财富却来自对非洲、美洲和亚洲人民的掠夺。国家向商人借贷以资助不断扩张的海军。反过来，海军则负责保护满载东亚和美洲战利品返回荷兰的商船。随着贸易的增长，船只增多，海军规模扩大，所需的资金也随之增加——当然，这也意味着更多的资金回流到阿姆斯特丹。

Financing the navy was another central motive in setting up the Wisselbank. Although the Dutch, unlike other European colonists, largely preferred isolated trading outposts to large-scale territorial conquest, guns played an undoubted role in the expansion of Dutch commerce. Much is made of Dutch tolerance at home, but Dutch riches came from a smash-and-grab exercise visited upon the peoples of Africa, America, and Asia. The state borrowed from merchants to fund the expanding navy. In turn, the navy protected merchant ships returning to Holland with bounty from East Asia and America. As trade increased, there were more ships, the navy got bigger, and more money was needed to fund it—but this also led, of course, to more money flowing back into Amsterdam.

荷兰虽小，却拥有庞大的商业帝国，正在变成金钱共和国。

A tiny country with an outsized commercial empire, Holland was turning into the republic of money.

货币共和国

The republic of money

到了16世纪80年代末，荷兰开始尝试发行长期债券，通过向未来借款来为当下的投资提供资金，这使该国在竞争中占据了优势。由公民可持有的股份融资的新公司，依托于一套不断发展的法律体系，该体系为整个荷兰帝国的贸易制定了规则。在海外劫掠的同时，荷兰共和国也在国内寻求整合资源，共享投资机会。殖民计划。他们决定建立一个广泛的投资者基础，并建立世界上第一个股份制公司，至少是为规模较小的商人阶层服务。1602年，荷兰东印度公司（VOC）成立，这是一个由众多股东私人出资的金融巨头。其贸易利润如此丰厚，以至于VOC最终成为世界上规模最大的公司，其市值（按当时的货币价值计算）甚至超过了苹果公司。

By the late 1580s, Holland was experimenting with long-term bonds, borrowing far into the future to finance investment today, giving the country an edge over competitors. New companies financed by shares that could be owned by citizens were underpinned by an evolving legal system that set the rules for trade all over the Dutch Empire. While they were plundering abroad, at home the republican Dutch looked at combining their resources and sharing the opportunity to invest in the colonial project. They decided to create a wide investor base and the world’s first shareholding society, at least for the smaller merchant classes. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded, a financial behemoth financed privately by many shareholders. Its trading profits were so steep that the VOC would become the biggest company the world had ever seen, surpassing (in the money of the time) even Apple in valuation.

1602年末，荷兰东印度公司（VOC）对阿姆斯特丹的命运至关重要，以至于政府决定授予其东印度群岛贸易垄断权。此举的一个主要原因是为了降低风险。由荷兰投资者出资建造的船只，要么全赢，要么全输。如果船只沉没，一切损失殆尽。如果船只成功靠岸，利润将极其丰厚，投资者将一夜暴富。但如何才能降低风险呢？答案是赋予该公司垄断权。这意味着所有股东共同承担风险，从而降低风险敞口，并使这项原本充满风险但利润丰厚的业务变得更加稳定。

In late 1602, the VOC was so material to the fortunes of Amsterdam that the government decided to grant it a monopoly on trade in the East Indies. A major reason for this was risk mitigation. A ship financed by Dutch investors was an all-or-nothing affair. If the ship was lost, all was lost. If the ship docked, the profits were so monumental that investors made a fortune. But how do you streamline the risk? You give the company a monopoly. This means that all the shareholders pool the risk, mitigating exposure and creating a more stable profit stream out of a precarious but profitable business.

政府通过将公司的命运与国家紧密捆绑，鼓励民众持股，吸引那些原本不会持有股票的人。他们将投机性企业转化为投资机会，而这项投资将为广大民众带来稳定的收入来源，从而将金融资本主义深深植入荷兰人的心中。荷兰正朝着以金钱为媒介的股权文化迈进，这在历史上尚属首次。

By effectively tying the fortunes of the company to the state, the government encouraged shareholding, coaxing in people who would otherwise never have owned shares. They were creating an investment opportunity out of a speculative venture, and that investment would generate a stream of income for a broad section of the population, embedding financial capitalism deep in the Dutch psyche. Holland was on its way to becoming a shareholding culture mediated by money. The first one ever.

阿姆斯特丹的城市景观发展与人们想象中世界上最富有的城市的模样截然不同。这里没有宽阔的大道，没有用于炫耀财富的宏伟广场，也没有气派的贵族别墅——尽管拥有雄厚的财富，但这座首都城市却以低调的公共形象为特征。沿着运河为了发展银行业，荷兰人建造了漂亮的联排别墅，方便船只停靠，卸下来自世界各地的各种货物。这些狭长的商人住宅底层是仓库，二楼是店铺，通往楼上的住所和办公室。阿姆斯特丹的市民从佛罗伦萨那些精于赚钱的民主人士那里借鉴了这种模式。

Amsterdam’s cityscape evolved quite differently from how one might expect the richest place in the world to have looked. No broad avenues, no pompous squares for imperial displays, and no outsized aristocratic villas—public modesty, despite the underlying wealth, characterized the capital city. Along the canal banks, the Dutch built attractive terraced town houses, allowing boats to dock alongside, landing various goods from all over the world. These narrow merchants’ homes were designed with warehouses at the bottom and shops on the second floor, leading to the home and office above. Amsterdam’s burghers borrowed this model from the money-making democrats of Florence.

佛罗伦萨的辉煌，阿姆斯特丹后来演变成了如今的阿姆斯特丹。十五世纪的佛罗伦萨吸引着无数好奇者，他们被这座城市所吸引，因为这座城市以更加平等和易于获取的货币媒介而非森严的封建阶级制度来统治。到了十七世纪初，来自欧洲各地的雄心勃勃之士纷纷涌向阿姆斯特丹，渴望发家致富。在一个充满偏见和暴力的世界里，阿姆斯特丹接纳了被驱逐出西班牙和葡萄牙的塞法迪犹太人，他们带来了商业技能、金融智慧以及对地中海和北非贸易路线的了解。后来，法国新教胡格诺派教徒在荷兰找到了避难所，并将银行业经验带给了乐于助人的荷兰人。这些加尔文教徒多年来为法国王室服务，他们在里昂和阿维尼翁的集市上学习银行业务，并从他们在日内瓦的加尔文教同胞那里汲取经验。英格兰银行的首任行长约翰·胡布隆就是一位胡格诺派教徒，而像卡泽诺夫这样声名显赫的银行，其影响至今仍清晰可见于伦敦金融城。事实上，“refugee”（难民）一词源于逃离法国的胡格诺教徒的称呼“ réfugiés ” ，该词于十七世纪末进入英语。

What Florence had been, Amsterdam became. Florence of the fifteenth century was a magnet for the curious, who were drawn to a city governed by the more egalitarian and accessible medium of money rather than a tight feudal class system. By the early seventeenth century, the ambitious from all over Europe headed to Amsterdam to make their fortune. In an intolerant and violent world, Amsterdam welcomed Sephardic Jews, expelled from Spain and Portugal, who brought commercial skills, financial savvy, and knowledge of the Mediterranean and North African trade routes. Later, the French Protestant Huguenots found refuge in Holland, bringing banking experience to the obliging Dutch. Bankers for the French Crown for many years, these Calvinists learned their banking trade in the fairs of Lyon and Avignon, borrowing know-how from their spiritual cousins the Calvinists of Geneva. The first governor of the Bank of England, John Houblon, was a Huguenot, and in banks like the blue-blooded Cazenove their legacy is evident in the City of London today. Indeed, the word “refugee,” which comes from the name for the Huguenots fleeing France, the réfugiés, entered the English language in the late seventeenth century.

荷兰的经济奇迹曾是欧洲的热门话题。荷兰从斯堪的纳维亚半岛进口木材，从西印度群岛进口糖，从法属加拿大进口毛皮，从北美英国殖民地进口烟草，以及从婆罗洲进口肉桂、胡椒、生姜和丝绸。到了十六世纪末，也就是哥伦布抵达美洲一百年后，当地土著居民……拉丁美洲饱受殖民者带来的疾病和暴力摧残，以至于西班牙人已经没有土著居民可供奴役。荷兰在奴隶贸易中扮演着重要角色，将非洲人卖给西班牙人。荷兰人在国内较为宽容，但在公海上却选择视而不见。只要有蛋糕，总能找到荷兰人的身影。整个国家都弥漫着商业气息，某种程度上，荷兰更像是一个跨国公司——东印度公司——只不过它依附于一个国家，而不是反过来。想象一下一个拥有私人军队的公司，你就明白了。

The Dutch economic miracle was the talk of Europe. Holland was trading wood from Scandinavia, sugar from the West Indies, furs from French Canada, tobacco from the British colonies in North America, and cinnamon, pepper, ginger, and silk from Borneo. By the late sixteenth century, 100 years after Columbus had arrived in America, the indigenous populations of Latin America had been so decimated by disease and violence brought by the colonists that the Spanish had run out of indigenous people to enslave. The Dutch, prominent in the slave trade, sold Africans to the Spaniards. Tolerant at home, the Dutch chose to look the other way when it came to the high seas. If there was a pie, a Dutchman had his finger in it. The country oozed commerce, and, in a way, Holland could be described as a multinational company—the East India Company—with a country stuck onto it, rather than the other way around. Imagine a corporation with a private army and you get the picture.

但还有其他因素在起作用，一些彼得大帝试图理解的东西。它让他困惑不已，因为它并非物质层面的，而是社会层面的。事实上，它是一种理念。这种理念与荷兰人及其商业移民看待自身和未来的方式息息相关。随着金钱深入荷兰社会，它改变了荷兰人对未来的看法。例如，荷兰人提出了永续债券的概念。这是一种本金永不偿还的贷款。通过购买永续债券，贷款人不会收回全部本金，而是获得永续的收入流。你能想象一个社会对金钱的信任程度该有多高吗？人们竟然会为一笔明知永远无法偿还的贷款买单，还认为这是一种谨慎的储蓄方式？这简直令人难以置信。这就是金钱的魔力：那些看似天方夜谭的概念被人们接受，甚至变得司空见惯。

But there was something else going on, something that Peter the Great was trying to understand. It eluded him because it wasn’t something physical, it was sociological. In fact, it was an idea. This idea was linked to the way Dutch people and their mercantile immigrants saw themselves and their prospects. As money reached deep into Dutch society, it altered the way the Dutch saw the future. For example, Holland came up with the concept of the perpetual bond. This is a loan where the capital is never repaid. By buying perpetual bonds, a lender would not get his lump sum of capital back but instead receive an income stream into perpetuity. Can you imagine how much trust in money there must be in a society for people to finance a loan that they know is never actually going to be repaid and yet consider this to be a prudent form of saving? It’s a mind-boggling abstraction. This is the magic of money: notions that seem fantastical are accepted and even become humdrum.

一个社会若愿意用永远无法偿还的资金来资助项目，其信仰体系必然发生了改变。在文艺复兴时期的佛罗伦萨，只有那些老练的商人，凭借其错综复杂的商业网络，才有可能同意互相借贷，并接受资金上限的存在。这笔债务永远无法偿还。但在十七世纪初的荷兰，普通的市政当局通过向当地居民永久借贷来修建堤坝和海防工事，而当地居民则将这些永久债券作为一种储蓄方式。荷兰社会建立的这种金融信任水平表明，我们在前几章中讨论过的商业特质——例如对商业创新的信念、对风险的开放态度以及对金融的理解——必定已经深入到社会各个层面。

For a society to willingly finance projects with money that would never be paid back, something must have changed in its belief system. In Renaissance Florence, only sophisticated traders, with their intricate network of fellow merchants, might have agreed to lend to each other accepting that the capital would never be repaid. But in early seventeenth-century Holland, regular municipalities were building dykes and sea fortifications by borrowing into perpetuity from ordinary local people, who used their perpetual bonds as a form of savings. The level of financial trust established in Dutch society suggests that the mercantile traits we spoke about in earlier chapters—such as a belief in commercial innovation, an openness to risk, an understanding of finance—must have extended deep into society.

这种商业或资产阶级价值观反映了一个社会从自上而下的指令控制型经济向横向网络型经济的转变。荷兰人并无物质优势：不像英国那样拥有煤炭或铁矿；不像斯堪的纳维亚半岛那样拥有工业规模的森林；不像中世纪的意大利那样拥有地理优势；不像西班牙帝国那样拥有广袤的海外领土。荷兰不像法国那样人口众多，也不像俄罗斯那样拥有辽阔的国土。事实上，它的国土面积是欧洲最小的，而且大部分地区都被水淹没。但荷兰人有一个理念：以灵活的金融体系为支撑，实现资金的最大效益，从而促进大众商业参与。

Such mercantile or bourgeois values reflect a society moving from a top-down command and control economy to a horizontal network economy. The Dutch had no material advantage: no coal or iron deposits, unlike Britain; no industrial-scale woodland, unlike Scandinavia; no geographic edge, unlike medieval Italy; no vast overseas territory, unlike imperial Spain. Holland did not have a huge population like France or a huge landmass like Russia. In fact, its landmass was the smallest in Europe, and much of it was waterlogged. But the Dutch had an idea: mass commercial participation underpinned by an agile financial system that got the most out of money.

人们若非相信未来繁荣昌盛，就不会购买永续债券。正是这种对未来的信念，使人们相信自己能够改变命运。为了实现社会向上流动，社会必须提升商业活动的地位，赋予普通人一定的尊严和鼓励，让他们敢于追梦。如果整个国家普遍对商业活动嗤之以鼻，人们又怎会愿意承担商业风险呢？这种轻蔑的态度正是贵族阶层的惯常姿态。然而，正是与金钱的接触，改变了荷兰人的思想。

People would not have bought perpetual bonds unless they believed in a prosperous future. With this belief in the future, people came to believe they could change their own circumstances. For upward social mobility to be possible, society must have ennobled commercial effort, offering a degree of dignity and encouragement to the small person to dream big. Why would you take a commercial risk if the prevailing attitude of the nation was to demean and sneer at such endeavor? This scornful attitude is the default position of the aristocrat. But through its encounter with money, the Dutch mind had changed.

彼得大帝未能领会这两者之间的这一重要联系。个人自由、商业尊严以及充满活力、创新且网络化的经济。荷兰人除了最强大的原材料——我们头脑中的那颗自由而求知的头脑——之外，别无其他原材料。没有这种人类能量，就不可能实现可持续的经济增长，因为也就不可能持续创新。

Peter the Great failed to grasp this essential link between personal liberty, the dignity of commerce, and a buzzing, innovative, networked economy. The Dutch had no raw material except the most potent of all, the one between our ears: a free and inquiring mind. Without this human energy, there could be no sustainable economic growth because there would be no consistent innovation.

商业与艺术的实验往往相辅相成。当荷兰商人拓展贸易的同时，荷兰艺术家们也在进行创新，这段时期后来被称为“荷兰大师时代”。与早期华丽的意大利肖像画不同，伦勃朗等人的肖像画风格朴素，摒弃了物质上的炫耀，反映了荷兰人对低调财富的偏爱。但这并不意味着他们没有彰显身份：例如，许多画中人物身着黑色服装，乍看之下似乎很朴素，但当你了解到黑色在当时是最昂贵的染料时，便会明白其中的意义。荷兰人的思想不断突破界限，以各种方式摒弃旧事物，拥抱新事物。永恒的纽带与维米尔的画作都源于同一源泉：人类的想象力。

Experimentation in commerce and art regularly go together. While Dutch merchants were expanding trade, Dutch artists were innovating during a period that would come to be known as the age of the Dutch Masters. Portraits by the likes of Rembrandt, in contrast to earlier flamboyant Italian portraits, were austere and absent of material ostentation, reflecting the Dutch preference for understated wealth. That’s not to say they weren’t signaling their status: for example, many of the subjects were dressed in black clothing, which appears modest until you learn that black was the most expensive dye at this time. The Dutch mind was pushing the boundaries, rejecting the old and embracing the new in all sorts of ways. The perpetual bond and a painting by Vermeer come from the same place: the human imagination.

风力交易

Trading on the wind

荷兰人推动了货币发展，于1602年创立了股票市场——新交易所。到了17世纪20年代，许多现代金融工具已被荷兰人广泛用于日常交易，包括期货市场（用于押注多年后可能发生的结果）、保证金融资（用于放大预判）以及期权买卖（用于押注暴利或灾难）。在阿姆斯特丹，几乎所有可能的未来事件组合都可以用货币来定价。17世纪初。荷兰人走火入魔也就不足为奇了。

The Dutch nudged the possibilities of money forward, founding their stock market, the New Exchange, in 1602. By the 1620s, many modern financial instruments were being used daily by the Dutch, including futures markets to bet on possible outcomes years away, margin financing to leverage a hunch, and the buying and selling of options to allow gambling on a bonanza or a catastrophe. Almost every possible combination of future events could be priced in money in the Amsterdam of the early 1600s. Is it any surprise that the Dutch got carried away?

随着越来越多的资本涌入荷兰，将其视为安全的避风港和充满机遇的熔炉，利率下降，房价飙升，即使是那些尚未盈利的公司，其股票价值也水涨船高。十七世纪初的荷兰人将这种现象称为“风商交易”（windhandel trading），意为“靠空气交易”。当时的货币是无形的。风商交易创造了账面利润，财富不断增长，人们的风险承受能力也随之提高。1630年至1639年间，荷兰东印度公司的股票价格翻了一番多，阿姆斯特丹股票指数也从1630年的229点飙升至1640年的500点。所有市场都在上涨。那些在房地产市场获利的交易员和投资者，纷纷将少量的荷兰盾投入股市，其中包括荷兰东印度公司的股票。有时，最糟糕的投资决策恰恰发生在看似最好的时代。当时市场一片繁荣景象，人们欣喜若狂。每一次股价飙升都引发了更多的流言蜚语，而关于巨额财富的故事又诱使更多的人涌入这个不断上涨的市场。致富从未如此容易，而当人们致富后，他们都想告诉别人。

As more capital sought out Holland as a safe home and a cauldron of opportunity, interest rates fell, house prices took off, and the value of shares, even in companies without any profit, soared. The early seventeenth-century Dutch referred to this phenomenon as windhandel trading, meaning “trading on fresh air.” Money was invisible. With windhandel generating paper profits, wealth was rising and people’s appetite for risk was expanding. Between 1630 and 1639, shares in the Dutch East India Company more than doubled and the Amsterdam stock index rose from 229 in 1630 to 500 by 1640. All markets were rising. Traders and investors, who made money on housing, stuck a few guilders into shares, including shares in the VOC. Sometimes, the worst investment decisions are taken in what appear to be the best of times. Effervescence and giddiness reigned. Each new height prompted more gossip, and stories of great fortunes coaxed more people to get involved in a market that kept rising. Getting rich was never easier, and when people get rich, they want to tell others.

好的八卦总是难以抗拒。八卦可能无伤大雅，也可能暗藏杀机——而我们大多数人都乐在其中。正如亚里士多德所言，我们是社会性动物。我们往往低估了八卦在经济和金融领域的影响力，尤其是在谣言和害怕错失良机的心理煽动下，大众情绪高涨之时。商业周期不过是人类本性的集体表现，在乐观与悲观之间摇摆不定。我们一起欢欣雀跃，也一起沮丧低落。“一起”才是关键所在。

Good gossip is hard to beat. Gossip can be innocent and it can be dangerous—and most of us love it. As Aristotle observed, we are social creatures. We underestimate the influence of gossip in economics and finance, particularly when the crowd gets hyped up by rumor and fear of missing out. The business cycle is nothing more than the collective expression of human nature, vacillating between optimism and pessimism. We get giddy together; we get depressed together. The “together” bit is the key.

我喜欢用“流言经济学”这个词来概括，当我们作为社会性动物，对新信息做出反应并将其传递下去，从而将我们的情绪传染给他人时，资产价格的反应方式。古典经济学，也就是世界各地本科生所学的经济学，假定人们在做金钱决策时是理性的，不受情绪或流言蜚语的影响。你见过这样的人吗？把我们这些美丽而又充满缺陷的生物视为理性，而忽略情绪的作用，是愚蠢的。纵观历史，金融模式不断重复，形成周期性的繁荣与萧条，这很大程度上是因为金钱具有社会性。投机是金钱最具社会性的体现，它将原本互不相识、除了一个共同目标——轻松赚钱——之外没有任何共同之处的人们聚集在一起。当我们被唾手可得的收益所吸引时，我们更有可能成为随波逐流的“动量”投资者，而不是逆流而上的“价值”投资者。我们大多数人的行为都像羊群一样。

I like to use the term “economics of gossip” to outline the way asset prices react when we, the social animal, respond to new information and pass it on, infecting others with our mood. Classical economics, as taught to undergraduates around the world, assumes people are rational and unencumbered by emotion or gossip when it comes to making decisions about money. Have you ever met a human like this? It is foolish to regard humankind, beautifully flawed creatures that we are, as rational, and ignore the role of our moods. Financial patterns are repeated throughout history, in recurring boom–bust cycles, largely because money is social. Speculation is money at its most social, bringing together people who might not otherwise know each other or have anything in common except a particular joint project—the project of making easy money. When we are excited by easy gains, we are more likely to be “momentum” investors who go with the flow, rather than “value” investors who go against the grain. Most of us behave like the herd.

在人群中，经济规律被动摇了。古典经济学认为，价格上涨会导致需求下降。事实果真如此吗？更准确地说，当某些价格上涨时，例如某些资产的价格上涨，拥有这些资产的人会感觉自己很富有，并四处宣扬。潜在买家受到这些传言的刺激，一听到资产价格上涨的信号就惊慌失措。他们认为今天的价格很划算，如果再等，明天会更贵，于是就立即出手。价格上涨会引发更多的价格上涨，从而提前刺激需求。经济学的基本规律之一，最终却并非真正的规律。

In the crowd, the laws of economics are shaken up. Classical economics contends that when prices rise, demand falls. Is this the case? It’s more accurate to say that when some prices rise, like the price of certain assets, people who own these assets feel rich and they talk about it. A potential buyer, spooked by this gossip, panics at the signal that asset prices are rising. Believing that today’s price is a bargain and if he waits it’ll cost more tomorrow, he buys today. Price increases beget more price increases, bringing forward demand. One of the fundamental laws of economics is not a law after all.

第二条基本定律认为，价格上涨时，供给也会增加。但这总是正确的吗？在上涨的市场中，一位潜在的卖家会犹豫不决。她心想，既然价格上涨，现在卖掉岂不是太傻了？她可以等到明年再卖，赚更多钱。她把这个想法告诉了朋友们。她们都选择等待明天更好的价格，而不是今天就卖掉。但价格上涨并不总是导致供给增加；事实上，价格上涨有时反而会导致供给减少，挤压市场。价格在繁荣与萧条的旅程中一路飙升。古典经济学告诉我们，价格是一种机械的工具，它标志着供求之间一种僵化的“均衡”，在这种均衡状态下，经济处于稳定状态。只有那些只会纸上谈兵的经济学家才会这样看待价格。在现实世界中，价格上涨是金融的兴奋剂。它们告诉我们账面上能赚多少钱，并引诱我们进入市场，促使我们去赌未来——这与稳定背道而驰。对经济学家来说，价格仅仅是一个数字；而对普通人来说，价格是一种感觉。

A second fundamental law contends that when prices rise, supply will rise. But is this always accurate? In a rising market, a would-be seller has second thoughts. She thinks, with prices rising, she’d be mad to sell now, when she could sell next year and make more money. She shares this observation with her friends. They all wait for a better price tomorrow rather than selling today. But rising prices do not always cause supply to rise; they can, in fact, cause supply to contract, squeezing the price skyward on a journey from boom to bust. Classical economics tells us that price is some mechanical instrument that signals sterile “equilibrium” between supply and demand, where the economy is stable. Only blackboard economists think of prices like that. In the real world, rising prices are financial aphrodisiacs. They tell us how much profit we can make, on paper at least, and lure us into markets, urging us to gamble on tomorrow—the opposite of stability. For economists, price is only a number; for real people, price is a feeling.

郁金香狂热

Tulipmania

十六世纪末，奥斯曼帝国的使节将郁金香引入阿姆斯特丹。（在土耳其语中，郁金香意为“头巾”，指的是其花朵独特的冠状形状。）这种当时最奇特的花卉激发了园艺和植物学界的浓厚兴趣。每年春天，阿姆斯特丹上流社会的地标——绅士运河（Herengracht）的窗户上都会摆满美丽的插花。

In the late sixteenth century, tulips were introduced to Amsterdam by the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire. (In Turkish, tulip means “turban,” the shape of the flower’s distinctive crown.) The most exotic flower of the era sparked the interest of the horticultural and botanical community. The windows of Herengracht—bragging walls for Amsterdam’s high society—displayed beautiful floral arrangements every spring.

在一个投机盛行、以风投为特征的社会里，为什么不押注郁金香球茎的未来价格呢？价格上涨意味着今天播种的球茎无论未来如何都能带来资本收益。与股票或房产相比，球茎价格低廉，使得小投资者也能参与其中。在接下来的十年左右时间里，郁金香的价格稳步上涨。由于荷兰资本市场的深度和复杂性，郁金香合约在日常商业活动中被广泛接受。商人可以用郁金香合约支付货款，然后在春天郁金香盛开时兑现合约，用所得款项偿还贷款，就像今天使用抵押品一样。这在我们看来或许很正常，但在当时……欧洲人从未走出过他们的村庄，而见多识广的荷兰人却在交易以郁金香为基础的抵押债务凭证。

In a highly speculative society, characterized by windhandel, why not take a punt on the future price of tulip bulbs? With prices going up, bulbs sown today would yield a capital gain come what may. Compared to shares or houses, bulbs were cheap and allowed smaller investors to get in on the gamble. For a decade or so the prices of tulips rose steadily. Due to the depth and sophistication of Dutch capital markets, tulip contracts were accepted in everyday business. A merchant could pay for goods with a tulip contract and then cash in when the flowers emerged in the spring and pay back the loan with the proceeds, in the run-of-the-mill way that collateral is used today. This might seem normal to us, but at a time when most Europeans had never stepped outside their village, the cosmopolitan Dutch were trading collateralized debt obligations based on tulips.

最初，郁金香市场主要由荷兰花商或富裕的业余球茎收藏家组成。然而，到了1634年末，哈勒姆的花商们注意到，一种新型的球茎竞价者出现了，其中一些人甚至远在巴黎。^投机者们被球茎交易轻松赚钱的故事所吸引。 1636年夏秋两季，郁金香狂热（ Tulpenwoerde）席卷而来。随着价格不断上涨，专业人士纷纷退出，郁金香市场被一群缺乏经验但热情高涨的普通民众所占据。阿姆斯特丹的商界巨贾们更倾向于使用汇票、城里的豪宅以及中央银行发行的纸币，他们只能在一旁观望这场狂热的蔓延。随着越来越多的人参与其中，郁金香经纪人开始接受实物支付作为担保。牛群、大片土地、绘画作品、十几只羊、几桶葡萄酒、一个银杯和1000磅奶酪都被记录为抵押品，用来购买一定数量的郁金香球茎。^荷兰人将自己的真正财富抵押在了转瞬即逝的郁金香球茎买卖中，寄希望于从少量郁金香球茎中获利。

Initially, the market was made up of Dutch florists or well-off amateur bulb collectors. By late 1634, however, Haarlem flower traders noticed a new type of person bidding for bulbs, some from as far away as Paris.³ Speculators were becoming attracted by stories of earning easy money in the bulb trade. Tulpenwoerde or Tulipmania took hold in the summer and autumn of 1636. As prices were bid upward, professionals opted out, leaving the tulip market to an inexperienced but enthusiastic hoi polloi. The merchant princes of Amsterdam, preferring to stick with bills of exchange, the posher homes in the city, and central bank–backed notes, watched from the sidelines as the mania unfolded. As more people became involved, tulip brokers started to take payment-in-kind as security. Cows, tracts of land, paintings, a dozen sheep, oxheads of wine, a silver beaker, and 1,000 pounds of cheese are all recorded as collateral that was used to secure a certain number of bulbs.⁴ Holland was mortgaging its real wealth on the ephemeral windhandel promise of making money from a handful of tulip bulbs.

1636年冬天，当时平均年薪在200到400荷兰盾之间，而城镇住宅的平均价格为300荷兰盾。一株普通的三等郁金香球茎，价格从繁荣前的25荷兰盾飙升至220荷兰盾。更稀有的品种，例如1636年初售价95荷兰盾的“将军”（Generalissimo）郁金香，仅仅一年后就涨到了900荷兰盾。而最稀有的郁金香“永恒的奥古斯都”（Semper Augustus）当时的售价更是高达6000荷兰盾——是当时平均年薪的二十多倍^。

In the winter of 1636, when the average annual wage was between 200 and 400 guilders and the average town house cost 300 guilders, an average tulip bulb, of the third-rate type, rose from 25 guilders pre-boom to 220 guilders. Further up the rarity tree, a Generalissimo tulip that fetched 95 guilders in early 1636 traded at 900 guilders only a year later. By then the rarest tulip, the Semper Augustus, traded for 6,000 guilders—over twenty times the average annual salary.⁵

成千上万的投机者涌入市场；酒馆里挤满了人，他们筹集资金，抵押财产，以求获得更多机会。这种狂热的气氛令人陶醉。在一夜暴富故事的煽动下，人群将疯狂推向顶峰，直到1637年2月3日，抢购的恐慌转变为抛售的恐慌。破产现象十分普遍。人群的情绪从贪婪转向恐惧，从狂喜转向恐慌，而价格——曾经激励大众上涨的信号，如今却在下跌时粉碎了他们的梦想。

Thousands of speculators were now involved; taverns were overflowing with people pooling their resources and mortgaging possessions in search of more exposure. The giddiness of the crowd, egged on by tales of fortunes made, drove the madness until February 3, 1637, when panic to buy was replaced by panic to sell. Bankruptcies were widespread. The herd moved from greed to fear, euphoria to panic, and the price, the signal that galvanized the masses on the way up, crushed their dreams on the way down.

郁金香狂热之所以成为一种大众现象，是因为它牵涉到普通民众和小商贩。与之后许多货币金融繁荣与萧条的周期不同，金融精英、阿姆斯特丹的银行家和洲际商业巨头们并没有真正插手其中。至关重要的是，由于所有抵押品都是实物而非债务融资，因此对经济造成的冲击是一次性的短期冲击，而非长期危机。如果繁荣是由信贷融资的，情况则恰恰相反（我们稍后会看到）。郁金香价格暴跌的冲击过后，荷兰经济很快就恢复了。

Tulipmania was a popular phenomenon in the sense that it involved the average person and small-time dealers. Unlike many future monetary financial boom–bust episodes, the financial elite, Amsterdam’s established bankers and intercontinental merchant princes, didn’t really dirty their hands. Critically, because all the collateral was real as opposed to debt-financed, there was a one-off short shock to the economy rather than a long-term crisis. The opposite happens when a boom is financed by credit (as we will see later). After the shock of the collapse of tulip prices, it didn’t take long for the Dutch economy to recover.

荷兰继续保持着贸易和金融领域的世界领先地位。当彼得大帝以工匠的身份出现时，他仍然有很多东西需要学习。从17世纪末，也就是1688年荷兰军队入侵英国之后，阿姆斯特丹的许多金融技巧跨越北海传入伦敦。荷兰的银行家和金融家追随奥兰治亲王威廉的脚步来到英国，将阿姆斯特丹的金融基因注入伦敦。荷兰是第一个大规模经历我们今天所说的金融资产阶级崛起的国家。这个阶层凭借其对金钱的娴熟运用，使这个小小的共和国能够调动自身和全球的资源，最终使阿姆斯特丹成为世界上最富有的城市，荷兰甚至能够策划一场针对其远比自己强大的邻国的政变。

Holland continued to trade and lead the world in finance. By the time Peter the Great rocked up in his artisan disguise, there was still a lot for him to learn. From the close of the seventeenth century, following the Dutch army’s invasion of England in 1688, many of Amsterdam’s financial tricks passed across the North Sea to London. Dutch bankers and financiers followed King William of Orange to England, fertilizing London with Amsterdam’s monetary DNA. Holland was the first country to experience, in a widespread fashion, what we would call today the rise of a financial bourgeoisie, a class whose agility with money allowed this tiny republic to galvanize its own resources and those of the globe to such an extent that Amsterdam became the richest city in the world, and Holland could orchestrate a coup d’état on its far larger neighbor.

从阿姆斯特丹传播开来的创新之一当时的伦敦是一家中央集权式商业银行，与威塞尔银行颇为相似。成立于1694年的英格兰银行发行纸币，催生了蓬勃发展的资本市场、永续债券、能够从投资者那里筹集资金的上市公司，以及能够进行风险共担的有限责任公司，这对于英国海外商业扩张的融资至关重要。

One of the innovations that spread from Amsterdam to London at this time was a centralized merchant bank not unlike the Wisselbank. The Bank of England, established in 1694, would issue paper money, leading to deep capital markets, perpetual bonds, listed companies that could raise equity from investors, and limited liability companies that enabled risk pooling, essential for financing Britain’s overseas commercial expansion.

从1602年荷兰东印度公司成立到荷兰在英国发动政变（又称光荣革命），货币领域的不断创新推动了荷兰的进步。十七世纪的荷兰人堪称金融大师，发明了许多我们今天仍在使用的金融工具。这个国家曾热情地接受了路德的新教思想，并迅速意识到写在纸上的股票价格也具有价值。而要让这种观念深入人心，人们的思维方式必须发生改变。

From the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 to the Dutch coup d’état in Britain, also known as the Glorious Revolution, constant innovation with money had propelled Holland forward. The seventeenth-century Dutch were the princes of money, inventing many of the financial instruments we continue to use today. The same country that had adopted Luther’s Protestant message with such enthusiasm was quick to imagine that a share price written on a piece of paper could have value, and for this idea to take hold, something had to change in people’s heads.

荷兰的货币世纪展现了金钱和贸易所能取得的成就，而郁金香狂热也暴露了金钱煽动下的群体疯狂。尽管大规模的套利贸易——在全球各地低价购入商品，再在欧洲高价出售——使阿姆斯特丹的商人们暴富，但却给全球被殖民的人民带来了残酷的代价。这种代价在接下来的几个世纪里持续存在。对金钱的追求，对某些人来说是一种解放，但也直接导致了数百万人的殖民、虐待和堕落。推动人类进步和创新的技术，也助长了恐怖和苦难。金钱的故事，归根结底，就是我们自身的故事——无论好坏。

While the Dutch monetary century revealed what can be achieved via money and trade, with Tulipmania it also exposed the madness of crowds whipped up by money. And while the great arbitrage trade—buying goods cheaply all around the world and selling them expensively in Europe—enriched the merchants of Amsterdam, it came at a brutal cost for colonized peoples all over the globe. This cost would continue to be borne throughout the following centuries. The pursuit of money, a liberation to some, also directly resulted in the colonization, maltreatment, and degradation of millions. The technology that enabled so much human progress and innovation also facilitated terror and suffering. The story of money, once again, is the story of us—for good and ill.

逃犯

Murderer on the run

1694年4月，苏格兰浪荡子约翰·劳的处境岌岌可危。他刚刚把一笔可观的遗产挥霍在了赌博上，或许还沉溺于其他夜生活。失望的母亲不得不出手相救，而现在，他却要告诉她一个所有母亲都不愿听到的消息：他刚刚杀了一个人。年仅23岁，家境尚可的约翰·劳似乎注定要完蛋。真的是这样吗？

In April 1694, things weren’t looking great for hell-raising Scot John Law. He’d just blown a decent inheritance on gambling, and possibly other delights of the night. His disappointed mother had to bail him out, and now he was going to break the news to her that no mother ever wants to hear: he had just killed a man. Only twenty-three, born reasonably well-off, John Law was doomed. Or was he?

他曾在决斗中一时冲动，用剑刺穿埃德蒙·威尔逊的腹部，将其杀死。显然，劳和威尔逊爱上了同一个女人。不仅如此，这个女人，贝蒂·维利尔斯，同时也是国王的情人。一段复杂而危险的三角关系。或许在那一刻，就像《波西米亚狂想曲》中的主人公一样，他希望自己从未出生过。但劳在人生中无数次不可思议的险境中，侥幸逃脱了绞刑。杀人犯、赌徒、花花公子、艺术收藏家、赌场老板、情场浪子，总之是个十足的享乐主义者——货币经济学之父查理，远非如此。他原本是个枯燥乏味、典型的经济学家。但他其实是个很有趣的人，而且非常聪明。劳的一生充满了惊险刺激的冒险，他能保守很多秘密。

He had killed Edmund Wilson in a duel with an impulsive lunge of a sword to the belly. Apparently, Law and Wilson loved the same woman. That wasn’t all: the woman, Betty Villiers, was also the king’s lover. A complicated and dangerous ménage-à-trois. Maybe at that point, like the hero of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” he wished he’d never been born at all, but Law sidestepped the hangman in one of the many improbable scrapes of his life. Murderer, gambler, philanderer, art collector, casino impresario, seducer of women, and generally all-around good-time Charlie, the father of monetary economics was far from the dull, stereotypical economist. He was a hoot, and a highly intelligent one too. A man who could keep a secret, of which he knew many, Law’s life was one long, hair-raising adventure after another.

鉴于他后来的种种行径，有人可能会说，劳为了金钱什么都做得出来，这种说法只对了一半。最终，他彻底革新了货币体系，他的思想遗产如同知识分子的涂鸦，深深地烙印在当今的中央银行体系之上。约翰·劳是法定货币之父——法定货币是由中央银行发行的，不与黄金挂钩的货币。当荷兰人继续以金盾为货币体系的基石时，劳的体系却完全建立在信任之上。正如我们将看到的，这位在1694年自缢身亡的人，其动力源于摆脱束缚的渴望，这种渴望不仅体现在他个人生活中，更重要的是，也体现在货币管理方面。劳想要解放货币。无论生前还是身后，他都不是人人都喜欢的人物，但正如政治经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼特所说，劳“独树一帜……他以卓越的才华和深刻的洞察力阐述了他项目的经济学原理，这使他跻身有史以来最杰出的货币理论家之列。” ^¹

Some might say, given his later escapades, that Law would do anything for money, which is only half wrong. In time, he would revolutionize money itself and his legacy is scrawled, like intellectual graffiti, over present-day central banking. John Law was the father of what would become known as fiat money—money issued by central banks that is not tied to gold. While the Dutch continued to anchor their system around the golden guilder, Law’s system was constrained by nothing but trust. As we will see, the man who slipped the noose in 1694 was driven by the urge to escape constraints both in his personal life and, more importantly for our purposes, in the management of money. Law wanted to set money free. He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, either during his life or afterward, but as the political economist Joseph Schumpeter put it, Law “is in a class by himself … He worked out the economics of his projects with a brilliance and, yes, profundity, which places him in the front ranks of monetary theorists of all time.”¹

在劳谋杀威尔逊前后，他身着华服，在伦敦四处招摇，吃喝玩乐，到处惹是生非，却没有任何合法收入的迹象。决斗已经不再流行，但对于劳和威尔逊这两个自负又缺乏安全感的年轻人来说，决斗仍然是维护荣誉的一种方式。当然，这两个人本身也没什么荣誉可言。劳辩称这是一起激情犯罪。当他发现威尔逊也和维利尔斯有染时，便向这位情敌发起了决斗挑战。这就是1694年夏天在伦敦流传的故事。但还有另一种更引人入胜的可能性，那就是劳……事实上，他受雇成为一名杀手。有传言说，威尔逊是包养的。故事到这里变得更加耸人听闻了。

Around the time he murdered Wilson, Law was swanning around London in his finery, eating, drinking, and generally causing mayhem absent any sign of legitimate income. Duels were going out of fashion, but for a couple of young men about town, Law and Wilson, puffed up by vanity and insecurity, a duel was still a way to preserve honor. Not that the pair in question had much of that. Law’s defense was that it was a crime of passion. On finding out that Wilson was also in Villiers’s bed, he challenged his amorous competitor to a duel. That was the story doing the rounds in London in the summer of 1694. But there’s another, more titillating possibility, which is that Law was in fact hired as a hit man. Rumor had it that Wilson was a kept man. Here’s where the story gets even more scandalous.

多年后的1723年，一本名为《某位已故贵族与著名威尔逊先生之间的情书：揭秘这位名流的崛起与惊人辉煌的真实历史》的四十九页小册子，对威尔逊奢靡的生活方式提出了另一种耸人听闻的解释。这本小册子暗示，威尔逊一直被一位男性情人供养，衣食无忧。据说，这位贵族已经厌倦了威尔逊的“情人”身份——或许是威尔逊在经济上索取过多，又或许，更有可能的是，他威胁要泄露秘密。在这个故事里，没有激情犯罪，没有被抛弃的情人，也没有国王的情妇与两位年轻男子共享风流韵事。埃德蒙之死只是一起简单的暗杀——而约翰·劳正是受雇的刺客。

Many years later, in 1723, an alternative and scurrilous explanation for Wilson’s luxurious lifestyle emerged in a forty-nine-page pamphlet entitled Love-Letters Between a certain late Nobleman and the famous Mr. Wilson discovering the true History of the Rise and surprising Grandeur of that celebrated Beau. The pamphlet suggested that Wilson had been kept in silk and sauce by a male lover. The nobleman, allegedly, had become tired of Wilson as a lover—maybe he had become excessively demanding from a financial viewpoint or, more likely, he was threatening to spill the beans. In this story, there is no crime of passion, no spurned lover, no king’s mistress sharing two younger bucks. The killing of Edmund was a simple hit—and John Law was the paid assassin.

对于像里克托·诺顿这样的早期同性恋文学史学家来说，这些信件堪称一件轰动之事。信件暗示，信中所指的贵族是第三代桑德兰伯爵查尔斯·斯宾塞，他是温斯顿·丘吉尔、戴安娜王妃以及下一任英国国王威廉王子的直系祖先。如果这一假设成立——尽管目前证据尚属间接——那么直接参与1694年4月布卢姆斯伯里荒原埃德蒙·威尔逊谋杀案的两人便是约翰·劳和查尔斯·斯宾塞。26年后，在1720年股市泡沫鼎盛时期，这两位可能的同谋再次相遇，一位是法国财政总监，另一位是英国第一财政大臣。他们仍然保守着秘密，而这些秘密将在另一桩涉及金钱、情人和皇室的故事中救他们一命。我们稍后再谈。

A cause célèbre for historians of early gay literature, such as Rictor Norton, the letters hint that the nobleman in question was Charles Spencer, the 3rd Earl of Sunderland, a direct ancestor of Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, and Prince William, the next king of England. If this hypothesis is correct—the evidence for it is still somewhat circumstantial—then the two men most directly involved in the killing of Edmund Wilson on Bloomsbury Heath in April 1694 were John Law and Charles Spencer. Twenty-six years later, in 1720, at the height of the stock market bubbles, these two possible criminal accomplices would meet again, one as France’s Controller-General of Finances and the other as Britain’s First Lord of the Treasury. They were still keeping secrets, and secrets would save both their hides in another story involving money, lovers, and royalty. We’ll return to that later.

劳不仅逃脱了死刑，也免于牢狱之灾。伦敦公共档案馆的文件显示政府安排他越狱。2^这究竟是因为劳在苏格兰的权势人物的特殊斡旋，还是因为当初策划劳在决斗中杀死威尔逊时，政府给予他的某种保证？在位高权重的人脉关系确实有用，尤其当你掌握可能危及他们的信息时。1694年“越狱”后，劳在接下来的十年里辗转于法国、荷兰和意大利，实际上过着亡命天涯的生活。他利用在苏格兰求学时就展现出的数学才能，在欧洲的赌场里赚得盆满钵满。他运用概率论，积累了巨额财富，据估计，到18世纪20年代，他的财富已达150万至200万法国里弗尔。

Law escaped not only the death penalty but also incarceration. Documents at the Public Record Office in London show that the government arranged his escape from prison.² Was this because of the special pleading of Law’s well-placed Scottish connections or was it part of the guarantee given to Law when plans were made for him to kill Wilson in the duel? Having friends in high places can come in handy, especially if you have information that might compromise them. After his “escape” in 1694, Law spent the next decade traveling through France, Holland, and Italy, essentially on the run. He used his mathematical skills, first noticed at school in Scotland, to make a fortune in the casinos of Europe. Deploying the laws of probability, he amassed vast wealth, later estimated at between 1.5 and 2 million French livres by the 1720s.

第一位货币理论家

The first monetary theorist

虽然赌博让他过上了奢靡放荡的生活，但银行业和纸币的可能性却深深吸引了劳，这或许与他在阿姆斯特丹的经历有关。目睹了金钱对人们的影响，它所释放的能量，它所激发的激情，劳无法接受人类的努力应该受限于地下黄金的储量。他认为金、银、铜是古老而反科学的障碍，阻碍了纸币所带来的经济可能性。尽管身为一名被定罪的谋杀犯，严格意义上讲仍在逃，这位苏格兰人还是向英国财政大臣戈多芬勋爵提交了一份基于纸币的全新银行体系方案。

While gaming gave him a rich and louche lifestyle, banking and the possibilities of paper money intrigued Law, perhaps a result of him spending time in Amsterdam. Seeing what money did to people, the energy it releases, the animal spirits it liberates, Law couldn’t accept that human endeavor should be limited by the amount of gold in the ground. He saw gold, silver, and copper as ancient, antiscientific impediments to the economic possibilities that paper money afforded. Despite being a convicted murderer still technically on the run, the Scotsman sent a plan for a completely new banking system, based on paper money, to Lord Godolphin, the English Lord High Treasurer.

他于1704年提出的方案（直到1994年才以约翰·劳的《论土地银行》为^题首次出版）在措辞上显得格外现代，其对货币问题的清晰思考远胜于同时代的其他货币著作。回想一下我们之前提到的中国典当行的例子……在这一章中，财产被转化为流动现金。在十八世纪初的欧洲社会，有大量的财产可用作抵押品，但由于人们需要黄金或白银作为现金价值的支撑，货币供应始终紧张。尽管荷兰的金融创新层出不穷，但黄金的“铁腕”仍然限制着货币供应。在劳看来，这并非金融上的缺陷，而是想象力的匮乏。如果他能为纸币找到另一种基础呢？在他当时的思考阶段，这种基础就是土地——前工业社会所有收入的传统来源，也是一种稳定且流动性较好的资产。

His 1704 proposal (belatedly published for the first time in 1994 as John Law’s “Essay on a Land Bank”³) is remarkably modern in tone, showing a clarity of thought on monetary issues that is quite superior to the contemporary writings on money. Think back to our Chinese pawnbroker example in the previous chapter, where property was turned into liquid cash. In early eighteenth-century European societies, there was plenty of property to use as collateral, but there was always a squeeze on money because people wanted the reassurance of gold or silver underpinning the value of cash. Despite Dutch financial innovations, the dead hand of gold still exercised a limit on the money supply. For Law, this was a failure of imagination, not finance. What if he could come up with another base for his paper money? At this stage in his thinking, that base was land, the traditional source of all income in preindustrial societies, and a stable and reasonably liquid asset.

在劳看来，经济中可用货币的数量与经济增长率之间存在着显而易见的联系。这一联系代表着经济理论的一大进步。他首次将货币、货币供应量以及整体经济活力（他称之为“货币需求”）联系起来。他的核心思想是，新增货币供应量会激发经济活力，从而增加货币需求。例如，有人想开一家面包店，如果获得足够的资金，他就会开办这家店并开始卖面包。人们会用钱购买面包。随着商品供应量的增加，购买商品的货币需求也会增加。只要提供的货币用于投资像面包店这样的实体企业，经济产出就会增加（因为面包供应量增加了）。正因为面包供应量增加了，面包的价格就不会大幅上涨。需求总是会推高价格，但如果供应量做出相应调整，价格上涨的幅度就会比较温和。

For Law, there was an obvious connection between the amount of money available in the economy and the growth rate. This connection represented a major step forward in economic theory. For the first time, he drew a link between money, its supply, and the vibrancy of the economy in general, which he termed “the demand for money.” The nub of his thinking was that a supply of new money would generate economic energy and vibrancy, creating an increased demand for money. For example, someone wants to set up a bakery and, given enough money to do so, will establish that business and start selling bread. People will buy that bread—with money. The demand for money to buy the goods will then increase as the supply of the goods increases. As long as the money supplied is used to invest in real businesses, like the bakery, the output of the economy increases (as there is more bread). Precisely because there is more bread, the price of bread will not rise dramatically. Demand will always raise the price, but if supply responds, the price increase will be modest.

劳认为，新增货币将刺激经济活动，从而增加货币需求。货币需求和供给将同步增长，推动经济发展。经济增长速度加快，从而带来更高水平的整体繁荣。劳的这一思想是所有现代中央银行理念的源泉。即使在今天，美联储管理货币供应量并实现增长和通胀目标的职责，也直接源于劳的观察。

Law believed new money would generate economic activity, and thus more demand for money. Demand and supply of money would increase together, pushing the economy to grow faster, thereby bringing about an enhanced level of general prosperity. From Law’s idea flows all modern central bank thinking. Even today, the US Federal Reserve’s mandate to manage the money supply and achieve both growth and inflation objectives stems directly from Law’s observations.

新世界

The New World

英国财政大臣戈多尔芬拒绝了劳的提议。劳并未气馁，而是继续不懈努力，四处游说，试图说服所有愿意倾听的人，并在欧洲各地宣传他革命性的货币理念。他在法国取得了突破性进展。当时的法国是欧洲最富有的国家，也是除俄国之外面积最大、人口最多的国家。挥霍无度的太阳王路易十四于1715年去世，几乎使国家破产。摄政王奥尔良公爵菲利普二世深知法国需要注入经济活力。在绝望之下，摄政王听取了劳的建议。法国当时面临两大危机。首先，白银和黄金短缺。而第二个问题——巨额国债——则使这一危机更加严峻。劳的货币政策理念或许能够一举两得。

Godolphin, the English Lord High Treasurer, rejected Law’s proposal. Undaunted, Law plowed on, trying to cajole anyone who would listen, hustling his revolutionary monetary ideas around Europe. He got his breakthrough in France, then the richest and, Russia apart, the biggest and most populous country in Europe. The free-spending Sun King, Louis XIV, who had died in 1715, had almost bankrupted the country. The regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, knew that France needed an injection of economic magic. In desperation, the regent listened to Law. France was faced by two crises. First, they had a shortage of silver and gold. This was made more acute by a second problem: the very high level of state indebtedness. Law’s monetary thinking could kill both birds with one stone.

为了应对第一次危机，时任财政总监的劳建议用纸币取代金银等金属货币，并由一家新银行——法国总银行（General Bank）发行纸币。这家银行于1716年5月成立，其模式效仿英格兰银行（Bank of England），而英格兰银行本身又很大程度上借鉴了荷兰的维塞尔银行（Wisselbank）。劳计划说服法国最富有的贵族购买其股份。然而，劳并未向世人透露，最大的两位股东正是他本人和摄政王。这家私人银行在皇家特许状的授权下发行纸币，最初可完全兑换成金银，但后来却被限制为……只有依靠国家的信誉，并由税收收入提供资金，法国通用银行才能维持运营。纸币在经济中自由流通，解决了法国的第一个问题，这激励了法国商人、企业家和商业人士承担更多风险，将更多产品推向市场，并为新的贸易路线提供资金。

To address the first crisis, Law, as Controller-General of Finances, suggested replacing metallic money in the form of gold and silver with paper money issued by a new bank, the General Bank, which was established in May 1716. Modeled on the Bank of England, itself based largely on the Dutch Wisselbank, the new bank would coax France’s richest nobles to buy its shares. Law omitted to tell the world that the two largest shareholders were himself and the regent. This private bank, operating under royal charter, then issued paper money, initially fully convertible into gold and silver, but later backed only by the state’s bona fides, financed by tax revenue. The General Bank solved France’s first problem, as paper money circulated freely in the economy, motivating French traders, entrepreneurs, and business folk to take more risks, bring more products to markets, and finance new trade routes.

为了解决国家债务问题，劳深知他必须迎合人性的投机心理，而这种心理——至少在他自己身上——尤为突出。在观察了赌场里的赌徒之后，劳萌生了大规模债转股的想法。简单来说，就是押注未来来解决当下的问题。和所有推销员一样，劳需要一个引人入胜的未来故事。而在十八世纪初，未来就是新大陆，它承诺为那些有远见卓识、敢于冒险的人带来难以估量的利润（建立在掠夺土地和奴役无偿劳动之上）。

To address the national debt, Law knew he must appeal to the speculative side of human beings, a side that was—at least in him—highly attuned. Having observed gamblers in the casino, Law came up with the idea of a massive debt-for-equity swap. In simple language, this means betting on tomorrow to solve the problems of today. Like all salesmen, Law needed a spellbinding story about the future. And in the early eighteenth century, the future was the New World, which promised untold profits (on the back of stolen land and unpaid workers in the form of slaves) for those visionary enough to take the plunge.

新大陆的发现是欧洲历史上一个极具颠覆性的事件，如同所有颠覆性事件一样，它激发了人们的无限遐想。在美洲，土地价格低廉（是从美洲原住民手中掠夺而来），土壤肥沃。凭借宽阔的河流、无垠的地平线和广袤的森林，美洲将在未来几个世纪里成为法国经济增长的引擎。法国人一直嫉妒地看着南方的西班牙——一个在法国人眼中颇为轻视的国家——凭借中美洲和南美洲的金银资源积累了巨额财富。巴黎人意识到新大陆蕴藏的巨大财富，因为法国的猎人从美洲平原大量运回毛皮、皮毛和木材，而加勒比海殖民地则源源不断地输送朗姆酒、大米和烟草。

The discovery of the New World was a highly disruptive event in European history and, like all disruptions, it caught the imagination. In America, land was cheap (it was stolen from the Native Americans) and the soil was productive. With its broad rivers, endless horizons, and enormous forests, America would provide the engine of growth for France for centuries to come. The French had watched with jealousy as Spain to the south, in truth a country the French looked down on, became fabulously wealthy on the gold and silver of Central and South America. Parisians were aware of the potential wealth of the New World as French trappers were sending home furs, pelts, and lumber in abundant quantities from the American plains, while the Caribbean colonies sent rum, rice, and tobacco.

现阶段，殖民地及其巨额财富仅限于殖民者，也就是那些身处彼岸的人们。如果劳能够招募到数万名法国人，又会发生什么呢？通过出售类似荷兰东印度公司那样的股份来挖掘殖民地的潜力？谁不想从中分一杯羹呢？劳的计划利用出售股份筹集的资金偿还国债，以明日的美好前景来弥补昨日的罪过。

At this stage, the colonies and their vast wealth were limited to colonists, the people who were over there. What might happen if Law could enlist tens of thousands of French people into the potential of the colonies via the sale of shares in a company, like the Dutch East India Company? Who wouldn’t want a slice of that action? With the money raised by selling shares, Law’s scheme would pay off the national debt, atoning for the sins of yesterday with the promise of tomorrow.

1717年8月，劳接管了西方公司（Compagnie d'Occident），该公司被国王授予了在法属路易斯安那的贸易垄断权。当时的法属路易斯安那与如今的美国路易斯安那州并不相同：它面积广阔得多，几乎是今天美国的一半。这是一片广袤肥沃、灌溉良好的土地，不仅可以用于农业，还可以开采矿产。劳利用西方公司实施了他的债转股理念。他没有向新股东收取现金，而是向现有的政府债券持有人提供了一种互换方式。他们可以用手中的法国政府国债（billets d'état）换取新公司的股份。

In August 1717, Law took over the Compagnie d’Occident (Company of the West), which had been given monopoly trading rights by the king over French Louisiana. French Louisiana was not the same as the present US state of Louisiana: it covered a much bigger area, almost half the size of the United States today. It was an enormous tract of fertile, irrigated land, ready to be harvested not just for agriculture but for minerals. With the Company of the West, Law put his debt-for-equity idea into place. Rather than take cash from new shareholders, Law offered existing holders of government debt a swap. They could exchange their French government IOUs (billets d’état) for the new company’s shares.

许多人被进一步开发法属路易斯安那带来的巨额资本收益的前景所吸引，纷纷响应。劳深谙人性，他以远低于其真实价值的价格发行新股，这意味着股票一经买入便会飙升，而赢家们会像往常一样——吹嘘和散播他们的暴富，以此说服那些持有政府债券、较为谨慎的投资者也来新大陆碰碰运气。流言蜚语充斥着巴黎、马赛和里昂的咖啡馆，助长了贪婪驱动的兴奋情绪。随着西部公司股价的上涨，劳利用这些宝贵的股票作为资金，对其他公司进行了一系列惊人的收购，进一步强化了只要支持他和他的天才想法就能轻松致富的错觉。

Excited by the prospect of large capital gains from further exploitation of French Louisiana, many jumped at the idea. Law, ever the student of human psychology, made the new shares available at a deep discount to what he thought was their true value, meaning the shares would bounce on purchase, and the winners would do what they always do—brag and gossip about their new riches, persuading more reticent owners of government debt to have a flutter on the New World. Gossip infiltrated the cafés of Paris, Marseille, and Lyon, creating excitement leveraged by greed. As the share price of the Company of the West rose, Law used these valuable shares as currency to finance a series of spectacular takeovers of other companies, heightening the sense of easy riches available to anyone who’d back him and his genius ideas.

密西西比燃烧

Mississippi burning

劳通过说服摄政王将法国总银行收归国有，从而将国家牢牢掌控在他的手中。自此，所有税款都汇入这家银行，所有国家开支也都由该银行支付。劳掌控了国家财政，全国所有税务人员都为他效力。法国正经历一场由劳一人主导的杠杆式管理层收购，而无人察觉。唯一的管理者就是劳，而资金则来自法国人民。1718年，随着西部公司不断扩张，法国总银行更名为皇家银行，这充分表明劳在摄政王核心圈子中的地位之高。王室与凶手沆瀣一气。

Law glued the state onto his ventures by persuading the regent to turn the General Bank into the government’s bank, meaning the formerly private bank was nationalized. From this point, all taxes were paid to and all state spending disbursed from this bank. Law now had the state’s central treasury and every taxman in the country working for him. France was experiencing a one-man leveraged management buyout, and no one was any the wiser. There was only one manager, Law, and it was the French people who were providing the money. In 1718, as the Company of the West continued to expand, the General Bank was renamed the Royal Bank, showing the extent to which Law was in the regent’s inner circle. The Crown and the murderer were in it together.

劳反复使用同样的伎俩，在法国殖民地收购空壳公司，并将它们捆绑在一起，赋予它们攫取未来财富的使命。这家母公司后来被称为密西西比公司，这个名字对于一个业务涵盖从糖到奴隶贸易等方方面面的实体来说，已经足够含糊了。18世纪初，欧洲殖民者利用当地投资者的贪婪，剥削被征服者的生命、土地和矿产财富。在这些地方权贵的支持和私人军队（例如荷兰东印度公司的军队）的掩护下，密西西比公司发展成了一个庞然大物。为了筹集收购资金，这位操纵大师劳继续使用同样的伎俩，以极低的价格向投资者出售股票，从而推高股价，吸引更多投机者。法国陷入了贸易狂热之中。母亲、女儿、孙女都加入了进来。她们为什么不呢？难道一切不是都在飞速发展吗？

Law repeated the same trick over and over, buying shell companies in the French colonies and bundling them together, all with mandates to exploit future bounty. The parent company came to be known as the Mississippi Company, a sufficiently vague name for an entity that covered everything from sugar to slave trading. In the early 1700s, European colonists were harnessing the greed of local investors to exploit the lives, land, and mineral wealth of those they subjugated. With the support of these local bigwigs and the backing of a private army (like the Dutch VOC’s), the Mississippi Company was a behemoth. To finance his acquisitions, Law, the archmanipulator, continued the ruse, offering the shares at deep discounts to investors so that the share price would bounce, exciting yet more speculators. France was agog with trading fever. Mothers, daughters, and granddaughters joined in. And why wouldn’t they? Wasn’t everything going skyward?

随着股价飙升，一场股市大繁荣即将到来。与此同时，劳正在削减法国的国债，用政府债券换取股票，以低风险换取高收益。这项操作的规模之大令人叹为观止。财源滚滚之际，他的下一步是为法国王室的全部债务进行再融资，延长到期日并降低利率。

With share prices skyrocketing, the stage was set for a major stock market boom. All the while, Law was reducing France’s national debt, exchanging government securities for shares, swapping the low-risk for the high. The sheer magnitude of this operation was breathtaking. Awash with money, his next move was to refinance the entirety of the Crown’s debt, pushing out maturity dates and lowering the rate of interest.

1719年5月，密西西比公司的股价为500里弗尔，到同年9月就飙升至5000里弗尔。 ⁴在股价飞涨的环境下，资本收益令投资者趋之若鹜。当股价上涨就能带来数倍的收益时，谁还会在乎枯燥乏味的股息呢？狭窄蜿蜒的昆坎普瓦街上的股票交易异常火爆，甚至连摆放交易桌的空间都没有；在这场混乱中，一位精明的驼背商人甚至将自己的驼背出租，供交易者用作写字台。 ⁵

The share price of the Mississippi Company, 500 livres in May 1719, had jumped to 5,000 livres by September of that same year.⁴ In the environment shaped by this rapidly rising share price, capital gains drove investors scatty. Who cared about boring old dividends when you were making many times your money on the share price appreciation alone? Share dealing on the narrow and winding rue Quincampoix was so intense that there was no room for tables to exchange contracts; at some point during this tumult, an entrepreneurial hunchback hired out his hump so that transactors could use it as a writing desk.⁵

劳的创新货币政策成功地彻底改变了法国的金融体系，使法国成为一个纸币充斥的繁荣经济体。一家高度投机的公司占据了法国金融体系的核心，它吸纳了国家的实际资源，并将其转化为未来利润的承诺，而这一切都建立在一个虚幻的观念之上：殖民地——在很多情况下不过是几个烟草或糖料种植园——就能让欧洲庞大的人口永远富裕起来。曾经的公共领域（税收制度）变成了私有领域，而曾经的私人领域（民众的储蓄）则变成了公共领域。

Law’s novel approach to money had succeeded in completely transforming the French financial system, turning the country into a boom-time economy brimming with paper money. A highly speculative company sat at the center of the French financial system, sucking in the real resources of the country and turning them into promises of future profit, dependent on the fantastical notion that colonies—in many cases no more than a couple of tobacco or sugar plantations—could make a huge population in Europe rich into perpetuity. What was once public (the tax system) became private, and what was once private (the savings of the populace) became public.

法国掀起了贸易热潮，全世界都在关注。那些早期入场的人自诩为远见卓识者，而那些尚未加入的人则感到被不公平地拒之门外。为了满足这股狂热——以及筹集更多资金——劳发行了越来越多的债券。股票发行接连不断，1719年秋季的短短三周内，密西西比公司就以每股5000里弗的价格发行了超过30万股股票，总额高达15亿里弗。为了确保这股狂热能够蔓延到那些无力一次性购买股票的人，劳引入了分期付款，即经典的“先买后付”策略。人们纷纷拿出自己往往无法负担的资金进行投资。小额首付和不断增长的股票需求，使得同年秋季的股价飙升至9000里弗以上^。

France had caught the trading bug and the world was watching. People who had got in early saw themselves as visionaries, and those still to join felt unfairly locked out. To satisfy the frenzy—and to raise more funds—Law issued more and more shares. Issue followed issue and within a three-week period in the autumn of 1719, the Mississippi Company issued over 300,000 shares at 5,000 livres a share, amounting to 1.5 billion livres. Ensuring that the mania percolated right down to those who couldn’t afford to buy shares outright, Law introduced payment by installment, the classic “buy now, pay later” strategy. People were putting down money they often couldn’t spare. Small down payments and an ever-increasing demand for shares pushed the price of shares to over 9,000 livres in that same autumn of 1719.⁶

在逃脱绞刑25年后，约翰·劳似乎又创造了一个奇迹：他拯救了法国经济，重塑了法国货币体系。一个全新的货币时代就此开启：货币的担保仅仅是国家的承诺和信誉。此外，国家债务也被转化为密西西比公司的股权。经济蓬勃发展，约翰·劳俨然成了法国的总理。对于一个逃脱的苏格兰杀人犯来说，这成绩相当不错。

Twenty-five years after he escaped the hangman, it looked as if Law had performed another miracle by saving the French economy’s finances and reinventing French money. A new era of money was upon us: money backed by nothing more than the promise and credibility of the state. In addition, the state’s debts had been converted into equity of the Mississippi Company. The economy was thriving and John Law was the French equivalent of prime minister. Not bad for an escaped Scottish murderer.

终局

Endgame

到1719年底，欧洲陷入了密西西比热潮。投机者涌入巴黎，买卖密西西比公司的股票，到12月，股价飙升至每股1万里弗尔，公司市值高达62.4亿里弗尔。股价一路高歌猛进，推高了货币需求，进而推动了更多股票的发行。皇家银行为此提供了便利，大量印钞。到1719年底，新发行的货币总量激增至10亿里弗尔。公司带动了银行的发展，而银行又反过来推动了公司的发展。（如今，我们在房地产繁荣时期也看到了同样的现象，房价上涨提高了开发商的利润，使他们成为银行更青睐的投资对象，银行向开发商发放更多贷款，这进一步推高了房价，开启了新一轮的信贷和货币创造循环——直到这种循环停止。）

By the end of 1719, Europe was swept up by Mississippi mania. Speculators flooded to Paris to buy and sell the Mississippi Company’s shares, which reached a high of 10,000 livres by December, valuing it at 6.24 billion livres. Firing on all cylinders, the share price drove the demand for money, driving the issuance of more shares. This was facilitated by the Royal Bank, which printed money hand over fist. New money created surged to 1 billion livres by the end of 1719. The company was driving the bank, which in turn was driving the company. (Today, we see the same phenomenon with property booms, where property prices increase developers’ profitability so they become even better bets for the banks, which lend more money to the developers, which further drives up property prices, kicking off an entirely new cycle of credit and money creation—until it stops.)

英国人能给予法国人的最高赞誉莫过于模仿。英国人通常在金钱方面对法国人嗤之以鼻，但在1720年1月，当南海公司提议接管大部分政府债务时，英国却效仿了密西西比公司的模式。这项提议被我们的朋友桑德兰伯爵查尔斯·斯宾塞接受了，此人据说曾雇佣劳刺杀埃德蒙·威尔逊，如今已是英国财政大臣。

The greatest compliment the English could give the French was imitation. Usually quick to look down their noses at the French when it came to money, Britain introduced a variant of the Mississippi Company in January 1720 when the South Sea Company proposed to take over most of the government debt. The proposal was accepted by our friend the Earl of Sunderland, Charles Spencer, the man who—allegedly—hired Law to kill Edmund Wilson, and who was now Britain’s First Lord of the Treasury.

英国人借鉴了法国的做法，并将其发扬光大。伦敦的交易所巷见证了世界第二次股市泡沫——1720年的南海泡沫。当时，大批人群涌入这里，不仅购买南海公司的股票，还购买各种各样“泡沫”公司的股票，这些公司的章程五花八门，从严肃的到古怪的都有。严肃的公司包括保险公司（其中一些至今仍然存在），而古怪的公司则包括生产方形炮弹的公司，甚至还有一家“项目待定”的公司。（这听起来或许很荒谬，但21世纪见证了SPAC（特殊目的收购公司）的出现——这是一种秘密设立的特殊投资基金，投资者会在稍后才被告知投资的具体内容！华尔街最顶尖的蓝筹投资公司甚至在2022年还在发行SPAC。）

The British saw the French and raised them. Exchange Alley in London hosted the world’s second stock market boom, the South Sea Bubble of 1720, with enormous crowds flocking there to purchase shares not only in the South Sea Company, but also a variety of “bubble” companies with charters that varied from the serious to the bizarre. The serious included charters for insurance companies, some of which exist today, while the bizarre included a company producing square cannonballs and even a company for “a project to be announced at a future date.” (This may seem ludicrous but the twenty-first century has seen the advent of SPACs [special purpose acquisition companies]—special investment funds set up blind, where the investor will be told what the investment is … at a later date! These SPACs were offered by Wall Street’s bluest of blue-chip investment firms as recently as 2022.)

回到法国，1720年2月，市场正处于狂热阶段，开始出现波动。最终，任何估值都可能……只有支撑估值的收入增长，这种局面才能维持下去。劳正面临着“皇帝的新衣”式的危机。人们对这种动摇的原因众说纷纭，从马赛的瘟疫到法国繁忙港口的通货膨胀，不一而足。无论催化剂是什么，市场风向发生了转变，买家消失了，取而代之的是绝望的卖家。密西西比公司的股价开始暴跌。人们的纸面财富消失了。恐慌之下，人人都想要黄金，而不是劳的纸面承诺。1720年12月，劳再次被迫逃离一个国家。而这也不是他第一次借助当权者的力量逃之夭夭。

Back in France, in February 1720, the market, deep in the mania phase, began to wobble. Ultimately, any valuation can only be sustained if income underpinning the valuation rises. Law was facing an Emperor’s New Clothes moment. Various reasons have been cited for the wobble, ranging from a plague in Marseille to inflation taking off in busy French ports. Whatever the catalyst, the pendulum swung and buyers disappeared, their place taken by desperate sellers. Share prices in the Mississippi Company began to plummet. People’s paper wealth vanished. In panic, everyone wanted gold, not Law’s paper promises. In December 1720, not for the first time, Law was forced to flee a country. And not for the first time he scarpered with the help of the establishment.

南海泡沫在英国破灭后，查尔斯·斯宾塞被带到下议院，被指控利用南海股票贿赂政客和乔治一世的随从，其中也包括国王的情妇。这种腐败行为威胁到了汉诺威王朝的统治，为了维护国王的利益，一些议员可能投了赞成票，以掩盖真相。经过激烈的辩论，斯宾塞被判无罪。流亡在外的劳眼睁睁地看着查尔斯·斯宾塞和约翰·劳的生活再次陷入金钱、情妇的泥潭，或许没有谋杀，但肯定存在渎职行为。

After the South Sea Bubble collapsed in Britain, Charles Spencer was brought before the House of Commons and charged with using South Sea shares to bribe politicians and members of George I’s entourage, including, yet again, the king’s mistress. This corruption threatened the Hanoverian monarchy and protecting the king may have encouraged some MPs to vote in Spencer’s favor to keep it quiet. After stormy debate, Spencer was acquitted. In exile, Law watched on as, once again, the lives of Charles Spencer and John Law were mired in money, mistresses, maybe not murder, but certainly malfeasance.

遗产

Legacy

尽管密西西比公司倒闭了，但劳的实验开启了国家与货币之间新型关系的大门。他的创新为我们今天使用的货币形式奠定了基础。这就是劳的遗产：由中央银行代表国家发行的货币，其效力源于国家的制度信誉，并且间接地，这部分损失由国家的税收收入弥补。法律表明货币可以脱离金银的束缚，这预示了20世纪极具影响力的英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的观点，他后来反对将货币与黄金挂钩。

Despite the collapse of the Mississippi Company, Law’s experiment opened the door to a new type of relationship between the state and money. His innovations laid the foundation for the form of money we use today. This is Law’s legacy: money issued by the central bank on behalf of the state, deriving its strength from the institutional credibility of the state and, indirectly, made whole by the state’s tax revenue. Law showed that money can be unchained from gold and silver, foreshadowing the influential twentieth-century English economist John Maynard Keynes, who would famously oppose tying the currency to gold.

劳也明白，货币驱动贸易，如果经济疲软，印钞就能刺激经济增长。这一观察是现代中央银行的信条和基本原则，因此，劳堪称量化宽松政策的精神之父（稍后会详细讨论）。劳深谙货币的魔力，认为它如同魔法一般，激励人们奋斗、创新，最终改变自身境遇，进而改变世界。

Law also understood that money drives trade and, if the economy is weak, printing money will kickstart it. This observation is an essential part of the catechism and the creed of modern central banking, and it follows that Law is the spiritual father of quantitative easing (more on that later). Law appreciated the alchemy of money, that it is a kind of magic, motivating people to strive, to innovate, and ultimately to change their own personal circumstances and thereby change the world.

劳曾考虑以土地作为其基础资产，这不无道理：以土地为抵押，纸币便能获得保障。然而，劳在试图减少国债的过程中走得太远了。他通过债转股进行的金融工程，使那些用国家债务换取巨额财富的模糊承诺的人损失惨重。劳将原本乐于从政府债务中获得稳定收益的富裕法国民众，变成了被快速致富计划的前景所吸引的投机者。如果他只依赖以土地为抵押的纸币，而不是以投机为抵押的纸币，他的体系或许能够成功。正如我们将看到的，几个世纪后，在更加谨慎的掌管下，由中央银行发行并以政府承诺为担保的货币，最终支撑起了世界上最成功的货币体系：法定货币体系。

Law had considered using land as his base asset, which makes sense: backed by land, paper money can be given an anchor. However, Law pushed things too far in his attempt to reduce national debt. His financial engineering, involving debt-for-equity swaps, wiped out the wealth of those who swapped state debt for the vague promise of enormous wealth. Law turned the wealthier French subjects from investors, happy to be paid steady returns from government debt, into speculators, excited by the prospect of a get-rich-quick scheme. Had he relied exclusively on a land-backed paper money, rather than a speculation-backed paper money, his system might have succeeded. As we will see, centuries later, and in more prudent hands, money issued by the central bank and backed by a government promise would end up underpinning the most successful monetary regime the world has ever seen: the fiat system.

在密西西比公司骗局崩溃后的几年里，法国金融业陷入衰退。中上阶层的积蓄大幅缩水，这导致了……在十八世纪剩余的时间里，法国拒绝接受任何货币创新。结果，法国饱受货币危机的困扰，并推行了一套不可持续的税收制度——而我们都知道，这最终导致了1789年的革命。约翰·劳的实验至少在一定程度上为法国大革命奠定了基础。但这还不是全部。五十年后，美国爱国者将查尔斯·斯宾塞及其在伦敦的同伙的腐败列为他们脱离英国统治的众多原因之一。国王和内阁成员与南海公司的金融欺诈行为的密切关系，向美国革命者揭露了英国体制的核心腐败，他们将其与罗马帝国的腐败相提并论。在随后的几年里，一篇又一篇的小册子出版，以南海泡沫事件作为英国贪婪的证据。劳及其所谓的同谋斯宾塞，是否可能促成了两次革命？

In the years immediately after the collapse of the Mississippi Company scheme, French finance went backward. The upper and middle classes saw their savings decimated and this led to a rejection of innovations in money during the rest of the eighteenth century. As a result, France was bedeviled by monetary crises and deployed an unsustainable tax system—and we know where that led to in 1789. John Law’s experiments, at least in part, laid the foundations for the French Revolution. And that’s not all. American patriots, fifty years later, cited the corruption of Charles Spencer and his cronies back in London as one of their many reasons for breaking away from the orbit of Britain. The proximity of the king and members of the cabinet to the financial skulduggery of the South Sea Company revealed to the American revolutionaries the rot at the heart of the British system, which they compared to the corruption of the Roman Empire. Pamphlet after pamphlet was published in subsequent years using the South Sea Bubble as proof of British venality. Could Law, with his alleged accomplice Spencer, have encouraged not one but two revolutions?

跛脚的魔鬼

The limping devil

如果拿破仑把你形容成“穿着丝袜的屎”，那你肯定是个无恶不作的恶棍。你能想象得罪过多少人吗？想想那些江湖骗子、马屁精、落魄的傲慢贵族，以及那些步步高升的冷血无情的雅各宾派分子。这侮辱真是妙极了，你甚至会为此感到自豪。究竟是什么样的人才会让拿破仑如此生动地形容你呢？

You must be some almighty class of scoundrel if Napoleon describes you as “a pile of shit in silk stockings.” Can you imagine the number of people who must have crossed Bonaparte? Think of all the charlatans, sycophants, arrogant aristocrats on their way down and cut-throat Jacobins on their way up. As insults go, it’s quite evocative. You’d be almost proud of it. What type of a creature would prompt such a vivid description?

夏尔-莫里斯·德·塔列朗-佩里戈尔是一位集主教、政治家、金融家、外交大臣、革命鼓动家、风流成性、深不可测的外交家和政治幸存者于一身的奇才。他^身手敏捷，才华横溢，却也诡计多端，跛脚并未阻碍他的脚步。他曾多次躲过上司的摆布，并在国王的宫廷中身居要职。在断头台遍布法国之际，塔列朗比被斩首的国王活得更久，并将自己重塑为一名激进分子。他如何成为拿破仑的外交大臣的故事足以写成一本书，但他最终却背弃了波拿巴。在最后一刻背信弃义，从国家失败中攫取个人胜利，并在1814年的维也纳会议上以战败法国首席谈判代表的身份重新出现。塔列朗拥有非凡的洞察力，能够准确把握风向，他不断在教会和议会之间摇摆不定，从议会到国王，从国王到雅各宾革命，从革命者到流亡者，从流亡者到拿破仑，最终又从拿破仑回到国王身边。能够做到这一点而不丢掉性命已属不易。而他不仅如此，还积累了巨额财富，拥有众多情妇、广袤的庄园和奢华的艺术收藏，并在法国乃至欧洲历史上可能最为动荡的三十年革命时期始终站在胜利的一方，这需要非凡的狡诈和冷酷。难怪那些被他背叛的昔日教会盟友——主教们——称他为“跛脚魔鬼”（ le diable boiteux）。

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was a bishop, politician, financier, foreign minister, revolutionary agitator, serial lover, inscrutable diplomat, and political survivor.¹ A nimble operator endowed with talent and mendacity in equal measure, his limp did not hold him back. He survived several bosses and held powerful positions in the court of the king. Outliving the beheaded monarch, as guillotines were falling all over France, Talleyrand reinvented himself as a radical. The story of how he became Napoleon’s foreign secretary would fill an entire book, but he went on to abandon Bonaparte, jumping ship at the last minute, clutching personal victory from national defeat, and resurfacing as chief negotiator for defeated France at the Congress of Vienna in 1814. With an extraordinary ability to sense which way the wind was blowing, Talleyrand switched sides from Church to parliament, from the parliament to the king, from king to Jacobin revolution, from revolutionaries to exile, from exile to Napoleon, and from Napoleon back to the king. To do this without losing his head is impressive enough. To do this and amass a personal fortune, numerous mistresses, vast estates, sumptuous art collections, and still turn up on the winning side during possibly the most convulsive revolutionary three decades in French and European history requires extraordinary cunning and ruthlessness. Is it any wonder that the bishops, his former ecclesiastical allies whom he double-crossed, referred to him as “le diable boiteux” (“the limping devil”)?

1720年约翰·劳金融体系崩溃后，货币创新在法国成为禁忌。尽管经历了南海泡沫的灾难，法国的宿敌英国却继续在金融领域进行创新，吸取1720年投机失误的教训，创建更深层次的市场，提供更多融资选择，从而促进了经济的蓬勃发展。英国对货币的掌控是推动工业革命的关键因素之一；如果没有投资者和资本市场为新技术创新提供资金，工业革命不可能如此迅猛地发展。工业化——包括工厂和机器、运河疏浚、深井采矿，以及新城市的建设——都需要资金。工业革命既是工程技术的壮举，也是金融技术的奇迹。

In the aftermath of the collapse of John Law’s financial system in 1720, innovation in money became taboo in France. Despite the calamity of the South Sea Bubble, France’s sworn enemy, Britain, continued to innovate financially, learning from the speculative mistakes of 1720 to create deeper markets, with more options for financing, leading to more economic vibrancy. Britain’s mastery of money was one of the critical factors in propelling the industrial revolution; it would not have taken off so spectacularly had it not been for the availability of investors and capital markets to finance the new technological innovations. Industrialization—with its factories and machines, dredging of canals, deep shaft mining, not to mention the building of new cities—demanded money. The industrial revolution was as much a feat of finance as engineering.

英国的债券市场实现了风险评估，而其保险业则降低了风险。各种金融这些产品为投资者提供了参与工业蓬勃发展的途径，而国家的货币实力则将其推向了另一条增长道路。妥善的风险管理能够释放更多资本，而资本增值的前景则促使人们将闲置资金投入投资。如果管理得当，每一种金融产品都会催生出更多金融产品，资本进一步渗透到经济中，从而降低经营成本，提高回报。英国人借鉴了荷兰的货币理念，并在荷兰人的技术基础上加以改进和完善。18世纪的伦敦成为了17世纪阿姆斯特丹所扮演的角色：全球首屈一指的金融中心。三次战胜荷兰的海战胜利或许也对英国的成就起到了推动作用。

Britain’s bond markets enabled risk assessment, while its insurance industry mitigated jeopardy. A variety of financial products gave investors a path to participation in the great industrial upswing and the monetary muscle of the nation lifted it onto a different growth path. Proper risk management makes more capital available, and the prospect of capital gain coaxes money from under the mattress and into the path of investment. If managed properly, each financial product begets more financial products and capital seeps further into the economy, pushing down the cost of doing business and pushing up returns. The British adapted the Dutch attitude to money, refining and improving on the Hollanders’ techniques, and London in the eighteenth century was to finance what Amsterdam had been in the seventeenth: the preeminent center for global money. Winning three naval wars against the Dutch probably helped the British cause too.

当英国锐意创新时，法国却对货币创新避而远之。自劳（Law）时期起，任何涉足金融领域的人都被视为疑点重重。新成立的银行甚至不自称为“银行”，而是使用“ caisses ”（意为“存款”）一词，可见银行业声誉之差。这意味着法国的货币体系十分原始。王室以高利率向本地人和外国人借款，尤其是向日内瓦的加尔文教银行借款。过高的税收弥补了资金缺口。路易十四的财政大臣让·科尔贝（Jean Colbert）对法国十八世纪的财政困境做了精辟的概括，他将税收的艺术比作“用最小的嘶嘶声从鹅身上拔掉最多的羽毛”。

While Britain innovated, France turned its back on monetary creativity. Since Law, anyone involved in finance was regarded as deeply suspicious. New banks didn’t even call themselves banks and instead used the expression caisses, meaning “deposits,” so besmirched was the banking industry’s reputation. This meant that France labored under a primitive monetary system. The Crown borrowed at high interest rates from locals and foreigners, notably Calvinist banks in Geneva. Excessive taxation covered the shortfall. France’s eighteenth-century financial dilemmas were succinctly explained by Jean Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister, who described the art of taxation as “plucking the maximum feathers from the goose with the minimum of hissing.”

全球贸易需要雄厚的财力，一个国家如果忽视金钱和货币创新，就有可能沦为行动迟缓的巨人，最终被更精于金融的竞争对手超越。一个半世纪前，灵活的荷兰人发行永续债券、成立股份有限公司并分享财富，如今，全球贸易却面临着同样的风险。尽管法国是欧洲最强大的国家，也是欧洲人口最多的国家，但其税收制度却十分原始，与巴比伦的税收制度并无太大区别。金融不稳定是法国经济的显著特征，而财政紧缩时期，政治脆弱性也如影随形。历代国王好战好党，这无疑加剧了公共财政的持续压力。虽然一些欧洲国家开始尝试将政教分离，但在法国，教士和君主却紧密相连。国王由法国红衣主教加冕，高级教士在君主制中扮演着举足轻重的角色。在贵族家庭中，长子继承家产，次子通常会被送入教会成为神父。而这些有志成为神父的人中，就有人成为了法国大革命的财政大臣。

Global trade demands deep pockets, and a country that turns its back on money and monetary inventiveness runs the risk of becoming a lumbering giant, outwitted by more financially savvy competitors. A century and a half after the nimble Dutch were issuing perpetual bonds, floating companies, and sharing risk, France, the most powerful country in Europe, with the continent’s largest population, was bridled with a primitive tax system that wasn’t too different from that of the Babylonians. Financial instability characterized the French economy and, as is always the case when money is tight, political fragility was ever present. A constant pressure on the public finances was not helped by successive kings’ weaknesses for war and parties. Although some European countries were beginning to distance Church and state, in France the clergy and the monarchy were enmeshed. Kings were anointed by French cardinals and the upper clergy held a defined role in the monarchy. In aristocratic families, the first son inherited the family estate, and typically the second son was sent to the Church to become a priest. One of those aspirant priests would become the monetary mastermind of the French Revolution.

货币困境

The monetary dilemma

法国大革命是一场关于金钱，特别是税收的革命。由于法国人在货币方面缺乏创新，其财政体系极其粗糙：国王需要钱时，就向穷人征税。最终，穷人对此忍无可忍。

The French Revolution was a revolution about money, and specifically about taxation. Because the French hadn’t innovated with money, the financial system was extremely blunt: when the king needed money, he taxed the poor. Eventually, the poor got fed up with it.

但革命者也需要资金。对于革命新手来说，速成银行和货币经济学课程或许比马克思列宁主义和宣传鼓动更有益。没有资金，就没有政变。在所有冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，大多数革命都与资金有关，革命者通常承诺将资金归还人民。革命利用腐败政权的税收不公，这个即将被推翻的政权榨取底层民众的血汗钱来资助革命。富人的生活方式。平等总是叛逆者口中的常客，无论是美国人、法国人还是俄国人。革命通常围绕着这样的问题展开：谁掌握着金钱？为什么我们没有更多金钱？以及我们如何才能获得所有财富？

But revolutionaries also need money. For the apprentice revolutionary, a crash course in banking and monetary economics might be more beneficial than Marxism, Leninism, and agitprop. No cash, no coup. Behind all the exalted rhetoric, most revolutions are about money and revolutionaries usually promise to give money back to the people. Revolutions weaponize the unfairness of taxation by the rotten, soon-to-be-overthrown regime, where the little man is fleeced to finance the rich man’s lifestyle. Equality is never far from the lips of rebels, be they American, French, or Russian. Revolutions usually center on the questions of who has the money, why don’t we have more of it, and how do we get our hands on all of it?

在攻占街垒的兴奋过后，革命者们必须面对现实，包括如何支付一切开支。新干部虽然掌权，却极度缺钱，无法依赖原有的税收体系——这正是他们最初起义所反对的。1789年6月17日，新成立的法国国民议会的第一项决议就是宣布所有现行税收非法。但没有税收，国家​​的钱从何而来？革命后的法国无法借贷，因为资本在人们还没来得及说出“自由、平等、博爱”之前就已经流出了法国。他们可以印钞，但即便他们更改了国歌，货币的基本逻辑依然不变：印钞过多会导致通货膨胀。如果在资源被战争消耗殆尽的情况下印钞过多，就会引发恶性通货膨胀。

After the excitement of storming the barricades, revolutionaries must focus on the mundane, including working out how to pay for everything. In power but desperately short of money, the new cadres cannot rely on the old tax base—that’s what they were revolting against in the first place. The first act of the newly established French National Assembly on June 17, 1789, was to declare all existing taxes illegal. But without tax, where does the state’s money come from? The revolutionary French state couldn’t borrow because capital left the country before you could say “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” They could print money, but even though they changed the national anthem, the underlying logic of money still remained the same: print too much and you get inflation. And if you print too much when your resources are tied up fighting a war, you get hyperinflation.

货币过去是、现在仍然是政府与公民之间的一种社会契约。我们公民会使用这种新货币，前提是政府维持其价值，并且承诺在我们提出要求时，向我们提供支撑货币的任何底层资产。通常，人们在使用纸币时会忘记它背后有资产支撑。他们逐渐接受纸币作为财富储存手段——没有人会认真思考美元钞票上的承诺。如今，纸币本身就足以代表这种承诺。所有纸币的发展历程都相同：从怀疑到信任，再到习惯，最终到“难道以前不是这样吗？”

Money is and always has been a social contract between government and citizens. We, the citizens, will use the new currency as long as you, the government, maintain its value and you undertake to give us whatever underlying asset backs the currency if we choose to demand it. Usually, when people use paper money, they forget it is backed by an asset. They come to accept the paper money as being a store of wealth—nobody seriously thinks about the promise on their dollar bill. Today, the note itself is enough of a stand-in for the promise. The road traveled by all paper currencies is the same: from incredulity to credibility, to habit, to was-it-ever-any-different?

法国革命者意识到他们需要劳的纸币炼金术，但他们需要的远不止一个承诺。这家公司是一家投机性企业，在遥远的大陆拥有土地。为了支撑这种革命性的新货币，他们需要一种更贴近生活、更容易被人们理解的基础资产。这就是跛脚魔鬼的由来。

The French revolutionaries realized they needed the alchemy of Law’s paper money, but they needed far more than a promise based on a speculative company with land in a faraway continent. To back the new revolutionary currency, they needed a foundational asset closer to home that people could understand. This is where the limping devil comes in.

卓越的操作员

The sublime operator

尽管塔列朗是长子，出身贵族，受过良好的教育，但由于左腿残疾，他无法从事军事事业。他无奈地接受了父母的决定，成为了一名神父。野心勃勃的塔列朗很快就开始谋求主教之位，他怂恿垂死的父亲去劝说路易十六任命他为欧坦主教，尽管他的母亲恳求教会不要让他从神父晋升为主教。有这样的母亲，谁还需要敌人呢？国王决定提名塔列朗，并向这位背后捅刀的母亲保证，儿子还有时间改过自新。然而，路易十六并非识人高明之人。

Although Talleyrand was a first son, born into the aristocracy and well educated, he could not have a military career because of an infirmity in his left leg. Reluctantly, he accepted his parents’ ruling and became a priest. The ambitious Talleyrand lost little time in agitating to become a bishop, encouraging his dying father to persuade Louis XVI to make him Bishop of Autun, despite his own mother imploring the Church not to elevate him from priest to bishop. With mothers like that, who needs enemies? The king decided to nominate Talleyrand, assuring the backstabbing mother that the son had time to improve his behavior. An astute judge of character Louis XVI was not.

到了1789年革命之年，塔列朗不仅成为了主教，还兼任了教会总代理。在这个职位上，他对教会的资产和活动进行了深入调查。他对教会基本财务状况的了解以及对会计细节的关注，确保了塔列朗能够计算出法国天主教会的净资产——这是一项极其宝贵的信息，而且掌握在合适的人手中，时机也恰到好处。可以说，塔列朗是“金钱主教”。

By the revolutionary year of 1789, Talleyrand had managed to become not only a bishop but also Agent-General of the Clergy. In this role he carried out an in-depth survey of the Church’s assets and activities. Such knowledge of the Church’s underlying balance sheet and his attention to accounting detail ensured that Talleyrand was the man who had calculated the net worth of the French Catholic Church, an extraordinarily valuable piece of information, in the right hands and at the right time. You could say Talleyrand was the Bishop of Money.

他代表教会处理财政事务，与财政总监查尔斯·亚历山大·德·卡隆密切合作，后者教会了塔列朗很多东西。银行业、金融业、财政政策和债务管理。他还教会了塔列朗如何利用高级料理来说服他人接受自己的观点。卡隆餐厅的主厨奥利维尔雇佣了一支由酱料师、糕点师和其他烹饪专家组成的团队，准备丰盛的晚宴，政策制定者们会在晚宴上讨论卡隆餐厅新的财政政策方案。塔列朗由此了解到，顶级厨师精心烹制的奢华晚宴能够有效地影响统治者、外交官、金融家和当权者。如今，又有哪位二十一世纪的企业交易撮合者不使用同样的伎俩呢？多年后，作为拿破仑的外交大臣，塔列朗曾说过：“他更需要厨师而不是外交官。”

Representing the Church in affairs of money, he worked closely with the Controller-General of Finances, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who taught Talleyrand a great deal about banking, finance, fiscal policy, and debt management. He also taught Talleyrand the art of using haute cuisine to persuade people to your way of thinking. Calonne’s head chef, Olivier, employed a team of sauce makers, pâtissiers, and other culinary specialists to prepare gargantuan dinners during which the policy makers would discuss Calonne’s new approaches to fiscal policy. Talleyrand learned that extravagant dinners prepared by top chefs helped bend the ears of rulers, diplomats, money men, and the people in power. What twenty-first-century corporate dealmaker doesn’t use the same trick? Years later, as Napoleon’s foreign minister, Talleyrand remarked that “he had a greater need for cooks than diplomats.”

在宴会间隙，这位“金钱主教”也对法国经济的运作机制有了深入的了解。一种名为“自由放任”（ laissez-faire, laissez-passer，意为“生产自由和贸易自由”）的新意识形态，源于文森特·德·古尔奈和弗朗索瓦·魁奈等经济学家的思想。这些经济学家被视为一场更广泛的哲学运动的重要组成部分，这场运动宣扬政治自由和科学研究自由的权利，他们是后来被称为启蒙运动的核心人物。经济学和自由是革命的盟友，显然是保守教会的敌人。你认为这位建制派主教在哪里有机会与这些潜在的革命思想家接触呢？他经常在共济会的会所里与经济学家们聚会。没错，这位主教兼美食家塔列朗，总是能抓住机会，而且——秘密地——还是一位共济会的领导成员。当时的社团是革命思想的温床。孔多塞、罗德雷尔和杜尔哥这三位杰出的经济学家倡导关于法国未来的自由主义思想，他们都是一个名为“三十人社团”（Trente）的成员。与他们交往使塔列朗受益匪浅。在经济学方面拥有优势。更不用说拥有正确的人脉和关系网了。

Between banquets, the Bishop of Money also picked up an intricate knowledge of the inner workings of the French economy. A new ideology, that of “laissez-faire, laissez-passer” (“freedom to produce and freedom to trade”), had emerged from the economic thinking of writers such as Vincent de Gournay and François Quesnay. Regarded as an important subset of a larger philosophical movement proclaiming the rights of political liberty and freedom for scientific research, these economists were central to what came to be known as the Enlightenment. Economics and liberty were revolutionary bedfellows, obvious enemies of the conservative Church. And where do you think our establishment bishop might have had the opportunity to rub shoulders with such potentially revolutionary minds? He hung out with the economists in a Freemasons’ Lodge. Yes, never missing a trick, Talleyrand, the bishop and gourmand, was also—secretly—a leading member of the Freemasons. Lodges at this time were a hotbed of revolutionary ideas. Condorcet, Roederer, and Turgot, an outstanding trio of economists who promoted liberal ideas about France’s future, were members of a lodge called the Trente. Mixing with them gave Talleyrand the edge in economics. Not to mention the right contacts and network.

伟大的幸存者

The great survivor

1789年5月，在攻占巴士底狱两个月前，塔列朗以主教的身份进入议会，这是他的权利。他早已设想过在教会之外的未来，而这场革命为他提供了机会。到了1789年10月，法国陷入混乱，议会严重分裂，自信满满的塔列朗主教以共识候选人的身份出现，成为财政大臣一职的稳妥之选。塔列朗察觉到权力正从国王、主教和贵族组成的旧制度中流失。他必须抓住机会，但该往哪个方向跳呢？一步走错，便会前功尽弃。他知道法国需要偿还国债，而这需要发行新货币。这位35岁的主教提出了一个明智的计划。他的提议极其简单，即强制没收法国所有教会财产。他的主教同僚们对此毫无预料；刀子刺入后，他们才感觉到刀刃刺入肩胛骨之间。

In May 1789, two months before the storming of the Bastille, Talleyrand took his own place in parliament as was his right as a bishop. He envisaged his future outside the Church, and the revolution provided him with his opportunity. By October 1789, with France engulfed in chaos and the parliament deeply divided, the uberconfident Bishop Talleyrand presented himself as the consensus candidate, a safe pair of hands for the position of finance minister. Talleyrand had sensed power slipping from the ancien régime of king, bishops, and aristocrats. He needed to jump, but which way? One false move and he was a goner. He knew France needed to clear its national debt and that would demand a new currency. The 35-year-old bishop produced a judicious plan. His proposal was simplicity itself, namely the enforced confiscation of all ecclesiastical property in France. His fellow bishops didn’t see this coming; they only felt the knife between their shoulder blades after it was plunged.

除了教会，谁会不喜欢这个计划呢？国王摆脱了困境，贵族们感到财政枷锁有所放松，而对民众来说，这计划也足够激进，因为它将那位靠美酒佳肴和卡门贝尔奶酪养肥的肥胖红衣主教描绘成了罪魁祸首。塔列朗效仿两个世纪前的亨利八世，他的想法本质上是一个债务管理方案，即将强制出售教会财产所得的资金用于偿还政府债务。一旦他将债务规模降低到一定程度，政府就可以采取其他措施了。政府债务偿还后，利率将会下降，更重要的是，他可以筹集新的资金并发行新的州债券。由于出售教会土地所得款项已用于偿还现有债务，此前因政府债务规模庞大而导致的违约风险将会降低。

Apart from the Church, who wouldn’t like the plan? The king was off the hook, the aristocrats felt the financial noose loosen somewhat, and for the people, it was radical enough, identifying the plump cardinal, fattened by fine wines and creamy Camembert, as the villain. Mimicking Henry VIII two centuries earlier, Talleyrand’s idea was primarily a debt-management proposal, converting the proceeds of the enforced sale of the Church’s property into money to pay off the government’s debt. Once he had brought down the amount of government debt, interest rates would fall, and, more significant, he could raise new financing and issue new state bonds. The risk of default, which was driven up by the sheer amount of government debt, would now diminish as the existing debt had been paid back using the proceeds of selling the Church lands.

他巧妙地攻击了教会，却没有攻击神职人员，因为许多神职人员在地方上仍然很受欢迎。塔列朗是个精于算计的人，他认为神职人员靠着周日的募捐就能维持生计，大约有8000万到8500万里弗。他提议，政府每年给每位教区神父1200里弗的津贴，并提供免费住宿，而教会的财产则用来填补国家预算的缺口。这对所有人来说都是双赢——除了主教们，他们的冷漠和傲慢使他们成了众矢之的。

Cleverly, he attacked the Church but not the clergy, many of whom were still popular at a local level. Talleyrand, a numbers man, believed that the clergy could get by on 80 to 85 million livres, made up of Sunday collections. He proposed that every curé be given an annual government stipend of 1,200 livres along with free accommodation, while the Church’s property would be used to fill the hole in the state’s budget. A win–win for everyone—bar the bishops, whose very aloofness and pomposity made them easy targets.

1789年11月，塔列朗向国民议会提交了将“国民财产”（les biens nationaux）归还国家的提案。他的朋友米拉波伯爵附议了该提案，米拉波伯爵是革命早期阶段的领导人之一。米拉波是一位雄辩的演说家，他的支持确保了议会投票赞成将教会的土地收归国有。塔列朗由此出发，革命的进程从此以惊人的速度展开。

Talleyrand’s proposal that “national goods” (les biens nationaux) should be given back to the nation was brought before the National Assembly in November 1789. It was seconded by his friend, Comte de Mirabeau, one of the leaders of the early phases of the revolution. A powerful orator, Mirabeau’s support ensured that the Assembly voted in favor of nationalizing the Church’s land. Talleyrand was off, and from there events moved at revolutionary speed.

革命纽带

The revolutionary bond

法国大革命的资金来源是一种名为“指券”的货币创新。正如我们之前所述，关键时刻往往取决于金融创新。金钱与重大事件几乎总是密不可分。到1789年12月，法国政府强制国有化……教会土地为革命提供了足够的抵押品，足以发行4亿里弗尔的指券，这是一种新的货币工具。购买指券的持有者有权在教会土地出售时购买。希望购买教会土地的投资者用黄金和白银购买指券，这促使贵金属囤积者将贵金属投入流通，从而释放了原本为应对不时之需而囤积的法国资本。

The instrument that financed the French Revolution was a monetary innovation called the “assignat.” As has been the case throughout our story, critical moments often turn on financial innovations. The hand of money is rarely far from momentous events. By December 1789, the enforced nationalization of Church lands had provided the revolution with enough collateral to back the issue of 400 million livres of assignats, a new monetary instrument. Purchasing an assignat would give the holder the right to buy Church land when it came up for sale. Punters wishing to buy Church lands bought assignats with gold and silver, coaxing hoarders of precious metals to bring them into circulation, thereby freeing up French capital that was being stashed away for a rainy day.

法国拥有大量教会土地；显然，作为一项全国性的计划，出售所有这些土地需要时间。但革命者没有时间。他们急需资金。因此，为了鼓励购买指券，国家为每张指券支付5%的利息，这样投资者在等待产权转让完成期间就能获得收益。黄金和白银不支付利息，但指券意味着投资者每年可以获得5%的本金收益。指券本质上是国家发行的借据，以征用的教会财富作担保，其运作方式类似于债券，使塔列朗的国库能够管理国家巨额债务。指券只发行大额面值，其目的是为了防止指券被用于日常开支。一旦投资者购买了教会土地并完成了产权转让合同，计划就是将指券——这张标志着合同第一部分的纸片——烧毁。

There was a lot of Church land in France; obviously, as a nationwide scheme, selling all this land would take time. But the revolutionaries didn’t have time. They needed money immediately. That’s why, to encourage the purchase of assignats, the state paid a 5 percent rate of interest on each assignat so investors would be paid while they waited for the conveyance to go through. Gold and silver paid no interest, but the assignat meant an investor would receive an annual income of 5 percent on his capital. The assignat, essentially an IOU from the state, backed by appropriated Church wealth, operated like a bond, allowing Talleyrand’s treasury to manage the country’s debt mountain. Issued only in high denominations, the intention was that assignats weren’t available for everyday spending. Once the investor had bought their Church property and the contract of conveyance had been completed, the plan was that the assignat, the piece of paper, marking the first part of the contract, was to be burned.

大片教会财产被转移到私人手中。新的土地所有者不可避免地成为了革命的支持者。塔列朗此时已觊觎实权，他正在建立自己的支持者群体，以推动革命的进一步发展。他创造了一个新的地主反叛阶级。塔列朗深谙如何利用群众。在农业发达的法国，中等富裕的农民们……它成为了革命的重要力量基础，而在此之前，革命主要局限于城市和知识分子阶层。将这两个权力集团融合在一起，堪称神来之笔。

Enormous swaths of Church property were transferred to the private sector. New owners of land became inevitable supporters of the revolution. Talleyrand, now eyeing a position of serious power, was building a constituency in support of both himself and further revolutionary moves. He created a new landowning rebel class. Talleyrand knew how to play the masses. In agricultural France, moderately well-off farmers became a significant power base for the revolution, which up to then had been an urban and intellectual affair. Fusing both power blocs was a stroke of genius.

早期的革命者是资产阶级叛乱分子，他们强调谨慎的必要性，认为出售教会财产只能用于减少国债。在革命初期，这场革命几乎可以被解读为一场由负责任的自由派公民策划的中产阶级改革运动，这些公民对金钱的态度倾向于谨慎。这些雅各宾派人士就是我们前几章提到的商人，他们渴望政治代表权，但却对叛乱后通常伴随的金融混乱感到畏惧。从财政角度来看，这场革命迄今为止更像是一次权力更迭，一场宫廷政变，而非一场乌合之众的起义。在最初的几个月里，塔列朗的财政计划使那些可以被称为“内部人士”的人受益，这些人与社会有着千丝万缕的联系，这与昔日革命中的无套裤汉截然不同。到目前为止，一切都还算稳定。

The early revolutionaries were bourgeois rebels, who emphasized the need for prudence, arguing that the sale of Church property could only be used to reduce the national debt. At that early stage, the revolution could be interpreted almost as a middle-class reform movement orchestrated by responsible liberal citizens whose attitude to money tended toward caution. These Jacobins were the merchants of our last few chapters, who yearned for political representation but balked at the financial anarchy that traditionally follows rebellion. Financially, the revolution had so far been more of a changing of the guard, a palace coup, than a rabble uprising. In these opening months, Talleyrand’s financial plan benefitted those who might be termed insiders, people with a stake in society, a far cry from the sansculottes of revolutionary yore. So far, so stable.

然而，随着内战爆发和欧洲君主制政权入侵的威胁，革命变得更加激进，这些信奉商业的革命者对金钱的态度也发生了转变。他们该如何支付士兵的薪饷？此时，指券——此前一直作为我们现在所说的资产支持证券——的作用从债务管理转向了货币创造。由于没有新的税收，法国革命政权极度缺钱。不出所料，财政赤字急剧膨胀。印制更多指券似乎成了解决之道。如果运气好的话，革命当局或许能够蒙蔽民众，让他们继续以为指券是由教会土地作担保的。

However, as the revolution became more radical due to the emerging civil war and the threat of invasion by Europe’s monarchist regimes, these mercantile revolutionaries’ attitude to money changed. How were they to pay their soldiers? At this point, the role of the assignat—which had thus far acted as what we would now call an asset-backed security—switched from debt management to monetary creation. Without new taxes, the French revolutionary state was desperately short of money. Unsurprisingly, the budget deficit exploded. Printing yet more assignats seemed to be the answer. With a bit of luck, the revolutionary authorities might have been able to pull the wool over people’s eyes while they still assumed that assignats would be underpinned by Church land.

塔列朗反对使用指券作为日常开支的货币，但革命的胜利如今已掌握在他们手中。激进分子们不太关心偿还国王的债务，而是更关注筹集资金和进行意识形态战争。像罗伯斯庇尔这样的人根本没考虑利率。塔列朗的计划被彻底颠覆，革命者放弃了债务管理策略，转而集中精力用新印制的纸币来支付日常开支。最初用于资助革命的工具，最终演变成随意印制的纸片，其目的仅仅是为了保全革命者免遭断头台的厄运。印刷机嗡嗡作响。

Talleyrand was opposed to using assignats as money to pay for everyday expenses, but the revolution was now in the hands of radicals, who were less concerned about paying off the debts of the king and more concerned with funding and fighting an ideological war. The likes of Robespierre were not thinking about the rate of interest. Talleyrand’s plan was upended and the revolutionaries abdicated the debt management approach to concentrate instead on using the new paper money to finance daily expenditure. The instrument that initially financed the revolution would mutate into pieces of paper printed at will simply to keep the revolutionaries themselves from being guillotined. The printing presses whirred.

金钱与恐怖

Money and the Terror

战争对经济从来都不是好事。到1792年末，革命后的法国即将陷入恶性通货膨胀的漩涡。塔列朗意识到革命正在升级，并变得危险地激进，于是在1793年1月国王被送上断头台前夕悄悄离开巴黎前往伦敦。随着国家陷入残酷的内战，通货膨胀率已达到每月12%，到1795年更是飙升至每月80% ^。

War is never good for money. By late 1792, revolutionary France was about to enter a hyperinflationary spiral. Sensing the revolution was escalating and becoming dangerously radical, Talleyrand slipped out of town for London just ahead of the guillotining of the king in January 1793. As the country descended into a vicious civil war, inflation had reached 12 percent per month and by 1795 would spiral to 80 percent per month.²

雅各宾政府试图通过实行价格和收入管制来抑制通货膨胀。乍一看，这似乎合情合理。如果物价上涨，就应该通过限制价格来控制它。但是，农民的成本因为通货膨胀而增加，他们为什么要以被限制的价格出售农产品呢？这无疑会让他们赔钱。显然，他们会选择在黑市上出售，因为在那里他们能得到一个——在他们看来——公平的价格。很快，国家和管制市场上的大部分商品供应都消失了。黑市蓬勃发展。为了抑制通货膨胀而引入的价格上限，最终导致了……粮食短缺会进一步推高通货膨胀。没有什么比饥荒更能破坏革命了。

The Jacobin government attempted to suppress these inflationary forces by introducing price and income controls. At first glance, this makes sense. If prices are rising, you try to control them by capping them. But why would a farmer, whose costs are rising because of inflation, sell goods at a price that is capped? It guarantees that he will lose money. Obviously, he chooses to sell on the black market, where he will get a fair price—in his eyes. Quickly, the supply of most goods to the state and in the controlled market disappeared. The black market flourished. Price caps, introduced to curb inflation, led to food shortages, driving up inflation even further. Nothing undermines a revolution more than starvation.

由于未能预料到这种经济动态，革命政府于1793年9月颁布了《最高限价法》，对包括肉类、黄油、咸鱼、啤酒、苹果酒、煤炭、木柴、蜡烛、油、盐和肥皂在内的39种必需品设定了价格上限。这些商品的价格不得超过1790年价格的三分之一，工资则固定在1790年水平的基础上增加50%。此举引发了公开反抗，因为固定价格不足以弥补民众在恶性通货膨胀面前的损失。货币再次撕裂了国家，通货膨胀正将法国推向恐怖统治的深渊。

Failing to anticipate this economic dynamic, the revolutionary government introduced the Loi du Maximum général in September 1793, establishing price limits for thirty-nine staple articles including meat, butter, salted fish, beer, cider, coal, wood, candles, oil, salt, and soap. Prices of these products could not exceed their 1790 prices by more than a third and wages were fixed at their 1790 level plus 50 percent. This move was met with open rebellion, as the fixed prices did not sufficiently compensate people in the face of rampant inflation. Money was dividing the country yet again, and inflation was leading France toward the Terror.

价格上限迫使农民藏匿庄稼和牲畜，以免亏本出售。供应紧张，进一步推高了价格。投机者囤积居奇，导致粮食短缺。为了杜绝囤积行为，政府鼓励间谍举报囤积者，并将罪名成立者送上断头台。罗伯斯庇尔启动了恐怖机器。可以说，在粮食短缺、告密盛行、货币贬值的环境下，是来路不明的金钱——而非政治阴谋——为断头台的运转提供了润滑剂。成千上万的人被公开处决，而布列塔尼和旺代地区萌芽的起义也被镇压。

Price caps forced peasants to hide their crops and flocks so as not to sell their products at a loss. Supply tightened, pushing up prices yet further. Speculators hoarded stock and food shortages ensued. To stamp out hoarding, the government incentivized spies to denounce the hoarders and then guillotined those found guilty. Robespierre cranked up the terror machine. It could be said that suspect money—rather than suspect politics—greased the guillotine, in an environment of food shortages, denunciations, and worthless currency. Thousands of people were publicly executed while incipient revolts in Brittany and the Vendée were put down.

罗伯斯庇尔本人于1794年7月被处决，恐怖统治结束，但印刷机仍在加班加点地运转，以支付士兵和间谍的薪饷：到1794年底，已发行了60亿里弗的指券；到1795年7月，发行量达到135亿里弗，到1795年12月增至235亿里弗；到1796年2月，这一数字更是飙升至惊人的400亿里弗。为了更好地理解这一数字，我们可以回顾一下，1789年，当塔列朗提出他的方案时，整个法国……国内生产总值估计为65亿里弗尔：革命者印制的纸币价值连城，相当于法国全年总收入的数倍。由于大规模伪造，官方数据实际上低估了纸币的流通量——甚至在法国监狱里，一些狱警串通起来，将印刷设备走私进监狱，供囚犯伪造货币^。3

Robespierre himself was executed in July 1794, and the Terror brought to an end, but the printing presses continued to work overtime to pay soldiers and spies: by the end of 1794, 6 billion livres of assignats had been issued; by July 1795, 13.5 billion had been issued, rising to 23.5 billion by December 1795; and that amount had increased by February 1796 to a whopping 40 billion livres. To put this in context, in 1789, when Talleyrand came up with his scheme, total French GDP was estimated to be 6.5 billion livres: the revolutionaries were printing multiples of the total French annual income in worthless paper money. The official figures actually underestimated the amount of paper money in circulation due to mass forgeries—even within French prisons, collusive jailers smuggled in printing equipment for inmates to forge currency.³

就像多年后的魏玛德国一样，纸币毫无意义。当货币消亡时，社会的信任和稳定也会随之瓦解。货币的众多心理特性之一在于它简化了我们复杂的世界。它是一种组织工具，能够带来纪律。如果货币发挥应有的作用，价格就值得信赖。价格蕴含着关于价值、稀缺性和相对价值的大量信息。除了经济影响之外，价格还起到心理锚的作用。货币提供了一种捷径，使我们能够通过一个或一系列可靠的数字来吸收这些信息。一旦失去可靠的货币这根拐杖，社会就会失去根基，而这正是法国在英国的敌人所乐见的。英国统治阶级惧怕法国大革命的信息，会不惜一切手段摧毁它。为什么不利用货币呢？

As was the case in Weimar Germany many years later, paper money meant nothing. When money dies, trust and stability in society break down. One of money’s many psychological qualities is that it simplifies our complicated world. It is an organizational technology that imposes discipline. Functioning as it should, money means prices can be trusted. Prices contain a vast array of information about value, scarcity, and relative worth. Apart from their economic impact, prices serve as psychological anchors. Money provides a shortcut, allowing us to absorb this information in a trustworthy number or a series of numbers. Kick away the crutch of dependable money, and society is unmoored, which is something France’s enemies in Britain appreciated. The British establishment, fearful of the message of the French Revolution, would utilize any means to destroy it. Why not money?

1793年，一位名叫威廉·普莱费尔（William Playfair）的苏格兰作家兼工程师（顺便一提，他制作了世界上第一张经济图表，运用折线图、柱状图和饼图来分析经济数据）构思了一个从英国策划大规模伪钞行动的计划。他将自己的计划提交给了英国内政大臣亨利·邓达斯（Henry Dundas），并在首相威廉·皮特（William Pitt）的默许下，小普莱费尔开始印制法国货币。（正如我们将在下一章中看到的，这并非英国第一次使用卑鄙手段摧毁外国货币：在1776年至1780年间，英国曾向美国大量投放伪造的大陆币，即当时的货币。）美国革命者。）正如普莱费尔写给邓达斯的信中所说，镇压革命有两种方法——军事手段或金钱手段——普莱费尔认为，与其流血牺牲，不如销毁指券^。4

In 1793, a Scottish writer and engineer, the beautifully named William Playfair (who, incidentally, produced the world’s first economic graphics, using line, bar and pie charts to analyze economic data), had conceived the idea of orchestrating a major counterfeiting operation from Britain. He presented his plan to the British home secretary, Henry Dundas, and with the tacit permission of prime minister William Pitt the Younger Playfair started to print French money. (As we will see in the next chapter, it was not the first time Britain had employed dirty tricks to destroy a foreign currency: between 1776 and 1780, it flooded America with counterfeit Continentals, the currency of the American revolutionaries.) As Playfair had written to Dundas, there were two ways of combating the revolution—by military means or through money—and Playfair argued it was better to destroy assignats rather than shed the blood of men.⁴

向西

Go west

在伦敦，塔列朗目睹了法国货币危机的爆发。但他并未久留。在英国人的劝说下，他离开了当时反法情绪高涨的英国，于1794年抵达美国。他带着革命领袖亚历山大·汉密尔顿的弟媳安吉莉卡·丘奇的介绍信来到美国。汉密尔顿和塔列朗后来结下了深厚的友谊。汉密尔顿也像塔列朗一样，利用货币改革来推动自己的政治生涯。与美国革命领袖的交往对塔列朗的下一步行动大有裨益：1796年，他凯旋返回法国，为拿破仑·波拿巴革命后的统治做好准备。他在英国和美国的人脉关系在法国重建外交关系的过程中发挥了重要作用。

From London, Talleyrand watched the French monetary disaster unfold. But he didn’t stay long. Urged by his British hosts to leave a deeply anti-French England, he arrived in the United States in 1794 with a letter of introduction from Angelica Church, the sister-in-law of the revolutionary Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton and Talleyrand would become firm friends. And Hamilton, like Talleyrand, would use currency reform to catapult his career. Hobnobbing with America’s revolutionary leaders did Talleyrand no harm at all for his next move: a triumphal return to France in 1796 to position himself for the postrevolutionary rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. His British and American contacts would be helpful as France needed to rebuild relationships.

令人惊讶的是，尽管经历了这一切，他仍然保留着主教的身份，至少名义上如此。然而，多起风流韵事和子女的出生最终导致他在1802年被教皇庇护七世解除神职。摆脱了神职人员的身份后，塔列朗得以担任世俗的波拿巴的外交大臣。后来，他又背弃了波拿巴，在合适的时机再次倒戈，转而支持君主制。从1789年法国大革命到19世纪30年代的动荡时期，这位绰号“斗志顽强的魔鬼”的塔列朗先后效力于路易十六、法国大革命时期的各派政权、拿破仑，以及复辟后的路易十八和路易·菲利普。晚年，塔列朗逐渐……1830 年至 1834 年间，他担任法国驻英国大使，并在建立比利时这个新国家的过程中发挥了重要作用，比利时是法国与其欧洲大陆敌人之间的缓冲区。

Amazingly, through all this, he had remained a bishop, in name at least, but multiple affairs and children paved the way for him being laicized by Pope Pius VII in 1802. Free of his clerical association, Talleyrand could serve the secular Bonaparte as foreign minister. Later, he would abandon Bonaparte, switching sides, once again at the right time, returning to support the monarchy. Over the tempestuous period from the revolution in 1789 to the 1830s, Talleyrand, the diable boiteux, served Louis XVI, various regimes of the French Revolution, and Napoleon, as well as the restored monarchs Louis XVIII and Louis Philippe. Toward the end of his life, Talleyrand became the French ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1830 and 1834, and he was instrumental in establishing the new state of Belgium, a buffer zone between France and its continental enemies.

尽管塔列朗发行的指券最终因过度印刷而变得一文不值，但它却为法国大革命提供了经济基础。如果塔列朗没有没收教会土地并将其出售，雅各宾派恐怕难以获得足够多的民众支持。塔列朗的计划，如同他之前的劳一样，旨在将法国及其庞大的经济从金银的桎梏中解放出来。如果后来的革命者没有贬低指券的价值，它本会被视为一种神奇的工具，不仅为革命提供了资金，还使得资产能够相对平稳地从一个权力中心转移到另一个权力中心。

His assignats, although ultimately rendered worthless by excessive printing, provided the financial launchpad for the French Revolution. Had Talleyrand not confiscated Church land and sold it off, it is unlikely that the Jacobins would have gained a critical mass of popular support. Talleyrand’s plan, like Law’s before him, aimed at liberating France and its giant economy from the tyranny of gold and silver. Had later revolutionaries not debased the assignat, it would have been seen as the miracle instrument that not only financed the revolution but also allowed for the reasonably smooth transition of assets from one power base to another.

过去几十年间，中东欧许多国家经历了革命或大规模的政权更​​迭。它们都面临着与塔列朗同样的困境：如何在国家政权更迭的过程中保障货币安全？上世纪90年代，在曾经的共产主义欧洲国家，建立一种可信的货币是实现从社会主义向市场经济转型的重要基石。各国央行从国际货币基金组织获得了大量美元或其他硬通货贷款，以锚定并维持新货币的价值。这些贷款支持的新货币缺乏历史记录，而这些国家实际上一直将德国马克和美元作为平行货币使用。尽管美国及其盟友为这一体系提供了支持，但即便有了这样的全球金融体系，许多转型国家仍然经历了恶性通货膨胀。

In the last few decades, revolutions or mass transitions have occurred in many countries of central and eastern Europe. All faced the same dilemma as Talleyrand: How do you protect the money of a nation as it moves from one regime to another? In the 1990s, in former communist Europe, establishing a credible currency was an essential building block for the transition from socialism to the market. Central banks received large dollar or other hard currency loans from the International Monetary Fund to anchor and maintain the value of the new currencies. These loans backed new currencies that had no track record, in countries that had, in reality, been using the deutsche mark and the dollar as parallel currencies. Although the US and its allies were backstopping the system, even with this global financial architecture in place, many transition countries experienced hyperinflation.

想想塔列朗，他当时也试图在法国推行类似的做法，只不过他没有得到任何外部支持，而且更糟糕的是……然而，欧洲旧政权仍在密谋反对法国。在这样的背景下，不应低估“货币主教”塔列朗最初的成就。而深谙此道的，正是美国革命时期与塔列朗齐名的亚历山大·汉密尔顿。同样的挑战——庞大的经济体却因货币不足而举步维艰——也曾阻碍着美国革命者的进程。至少在亚历山大·汉密尔顿为一种将永远改变世界的新货币——美元——制定出蓝图之前，情况一直如此。

Consider Talleyrand, who was trying to execute something similar in France, except he had no outside support and, worse still, the old regimes of Europe were plotting against France. When seen against this background, the initial achievements of the Bishop of Money should not be underestimated. And one man who appreciated this was Talleyrand’s counterpart in revolutionary America, Alexander Hamilton. The same challenge—a huge economy hamstrung by insufficient money—stymied the American revolutionaries. Or at least it did until Alexander Hamilton plotted a pathway for a new currency that would change our world forever: the US dollar.

子弹射入喉咙

A bullet to the gullet

尽管塔列朗权谋诡计多端，最终还是安详地在睡梦中离世。而他心目中的美国英雄，才华横溢的革命家和金融奇才亚历山大·汉密尔顿，却没能享受到同样的待遇。^塔列朗或许是个缺乏道德准则的人，左派视他背叛了革命，右派则谴责他背叛了上帝，但他辗转于各届政府之间，占据要职，并在后革命时期的关键时刻帮助稳定了法国，这足以证明他识人有方。他曾近距离接触过伟人，谈到汉密尔顿时，塔列朗说道：“我认为拿破仑、福克斯（英国辉格党政治家查尔斯·詹姆斯·福克斯）和汉密尔顿是我们这个时代最伟大的三位人物，如果非要在三人中做出选择，我会毫不犹豫地把第一位颁给汉密尔顿。^”

Talleyrand, despite his maneuverings and manipulations, died peacefully in his own bed. The same pleasure was not afforded to his American hero, the brilliant revolutionary and financial wizard, Alexander Hamilton.¹ Talleyrand may have been a man without a moral compass, whom the left saw as betraying the revolution and the right condemned as betraying God, but by weaving his way through the different administrations, occupying key positions and helping stabilize France at critical moments in the postrevolutionary period, he was clearly a good judge of character. He’d seen the greats up close and of Hamilton, Talleyrand remarked, “I consider Napoleon, [British Whig statesman Charles James] Fox, and Hamilton the three greatest men of our epoch and, if I were forced to decide between the three, I would give without hesitation the first place to Hamilton.”²

当我们想到革命者时，我们往往会想到英勇无畏的叛逆者的浪漫形象。但随后动荡和革命需要稳定者，需要那些巩固秩序、恢复稳定的人，其中包括会计师和金融家。塔列朗就是这样的人。亚历山大·汉密尔顿也是如此，他在支持乔治·华盛顿创建美国的过程中发挥了关键作用。

When we think of revolutionaries, we tend to have in mind the romantic figure of the daring rebel. But following convulsions, revolutions need stabilizers, those who consolidate and bring order, including accountants and financiers. Talleyrand was such a man. So too was Alexander Hamilton, who played a key role in supporting George Washington in the creation of the United States.

据塔列朗的传记作者达夫·库珀所说，塔列朗和汉密尔顿都是现实主义政治家，他们“鄙视感伤的废话，无论这些话是从罗伯斯庇尔还是杰斐逊的嘴里说出来的。” ^³在塔列朗于1794年至1796年流亡美国期间，这两位稳定主义者成为了朋友——而且，在建立美元和美国共和国新的金融体系时，汉密尔顿吸取了法兰西共和国的错误教训。

According to Duff Cooper, Talleyrand’s biographer, Talleyrand and Hamilton were both realist politicians who “despised sentimental twaddle whether it poured from the lips of a Robespierre or a Jefferson.”³ During Talleyrand’s exile in America between 1794 and 1796, these two stabilizers became friends—and, when setting up the US dollar and the new financial architecture of the American republic, Hamilton would learn from the French Republic’s mistakes.

1804年7月一个凉爽的清晨，在新泽西州威霍肯，俯瞰着哈德逊河，汉密尔顿与副总统阿伦·伯尔决斗。正如狱友们常说的那样，两人都有些“过节”——事实上，他们彼此厌恶至极——但很难想象，一位前财政部长和一位现任副总统是如何走到一起，全副武装地对峙的。最终，汉密尔顿试图射偏——至少我们推测如此——让伯尔得以对这位才华横溢的对手进行终生的报复。亚历山大·汉密尔顿，这位引入美元的人，或许比任何一位开国元勋都更致力于建立联邦制的美国，却不幸中弹身亡。他于次日去世。

On a cool July morning of 1804 in Weehawken, New Jersey, overlooking the Hudson River, Hamilton found himself in a duel with the vice president, Aaron Burr. As they’d say in prison, both men had a bit of “previous”—in fact they could not stand each other—but it is hard to fathom how a former treasury secretary and the standing vice president came to be facing each other, locked and loaded. In the end, Hamilton aimed to miss—or so we assume—allowing Burr to extract life-long vengeance on his more brilliant adversary. Alexander Hamilton, the man who introduced the dollar, and through this probably did more than any of the Founding Fathers to create a federal United States of America, took a bullet to the gullet. He died the next day.

在随后的一次访问中，伯尔试图会见当时权倾一时的塔列朗，他是美国的革命盟友法国的外交部长。塔列朗的秘书转达了塔列朗措辞严厉的信息：“我很高兴见到伯尔上校，但请告诉他，我的书房里一直挂着亚历山大·汉密尔顿的画像，人人都能看到。” ^⁴他们最终没有见面。

On a subsequent visit to Napoleonic France, Burr sought a meeting with the then-omnipotent Talleyrand, foreign minister of America’s revolutionary ally. Talleyrand’s secretary relayed Talleyrand’s withering message: “I shall be glad to see Colonel Burr but please tell him that a portrait of Alexander Hamilton always hangs in my study where all may see it.”⁴ They didn’t meet.

美元的诞生

Birth of the dollar

在汉密尔顿遇刺身亡的十二年前，正值塔列朗的指券价值暴跌之际，美国革命者于1792年4月2日通过了《铸币法案》。该法案确立了美元作为美国货币的地位，并将其价值与当时流通广泛的西班牙银元挂钩。作为稳定器，财政部长汉密尔顿从他在法国的朋友无意间引发的货币混乱中吸取了教训，将美元与一种公认且可靠的货币挂钩——货币需要一个锚点。

Twelve years before Hamilton’s murder, and as the value of Talleyrand’s assignats was tanking, the American revolutionaries passed the Coinage Act on April 2, 1792. This made the dollar the currency of the US and tied it in value to the Spanish dollar, a ubiquitous currency at that time. Treasury Secretary Hamilton, the stabilizer, learned from the monetary chaos his friend in France had unwittingly unleashed and tied the dollar to a recognized and credible coin—currency needs an anchor.

美国人也经历过类似指券的情况。大陆纸币是革命者用来筹集战争资金的纸币。由于战胜英国殖民者的胜算渺茫，革命者无法从国外借款，只能被迫向自己的支持者借钱。但是，就像法国人发行指券一样，随着独立战争的持续，他们印制了过多的大陆纸币。否则，他们该如何支付士兵和军需品的费用呢？

Americans had experienced their own version of the assignats. The Continental was the paper currency the revolutionaries used to finance the war. Unable to borrow abroad because their chances of success against the imperial British were seen as slim, the revolutionaries were compelled to borrow from their own supporters. But, just as the French did with the assignats, as the War of Independence dragged on, they printed far too many Continentals. How else could they pay for soldiers and army supplies?

大陆币暴跌，以至于出现了“一文不值”的说法。美国独立的经济代价由美国储户承担，大陆币的崩溃使他们损失惨重，而伦敦的大规模伪造更是雪上加霜。到1792年，虽然赢得了独立，但这个新生的共和国仍然脆弱，时刻担心英国入侵。汉密尔顿意识到，货币实验的时代已经结束；现在是巩固和稳定的时候了。作为第一任财政部长，他通过《铸币法》将美国金融体系与一种稳定的货币挂钩，这改变了货币的走向——也改变了美国历史。几乎无法想象没有美元的美国会是什么样子。事实上，从21世纪的视角来看，难以想象没有美元的世界会是什么样子。美元的发明者如果不是遇刺身亡，很可能已经成为美国总统。

The Continentals plunged in value, leading to the expression “not worth a Continental.” The financial cost of American independence was borne by US savers, who were wiped out by the collapse of the Continental, not helped by mass forgeries from London. By 1792, with independence won, but the fledgling republic still fragile and in constant fear of British invasion, Hamilton realized that the moment for monetary experiments was over; it was time for consolidation and certainty. As the first treasury secretary, he anchored the American financial system to a solid currency via the Coinage Act, and this changed the course of money—and American history. It’s almost impossible to imagine the United States of America without the dollar. Indeed, from the perspective of the twenty-first century, it’s impossible to imagine the world without the dollar. The man who introduced it might have become president had he not been murdered.

这位出生于加勒比海尼维斯岛的男子，是如何从几乎一贫如洗一路攀升至美国最高领导人之一的呢？他11岁时被身为苏格兰商人的父亲抛弃，随后胡格诺派教徒母亲去世，他便成了孤儿。能说法语的汉密尔顿得到了当地人和朋友的资助，他们发现了他的早期才华，并资助他前往纽约上大学。与许多家境优渥的联邦党人不同，他出身贫寒，但他的才智和战场上的英勇——他曾与华盛顿将军并肩作战，并在约克镇战役中发挥了关键作用——使他最终登上了美国革命权力的巅峰。

How did this man, born on the Caribbean island of Nevis, make the journey, almost destitute, to holding one of the highest positions in America? Abandoned by his Scottish trader father at the age of eleven and left parentless by the subsequent death of his Huguenot mother, the French-speaking Hamilton was financially supported by locals and friends, who noticed his early promise, and paid for him to attend college in New York. Unlike many of the well-to-do federalists, he had been born poor, but his intellect and considerable bravery on the battlefield—he fought alongside General Washington and played a critical role at the Battle of Yorktown—enabled him to ascend the heights of American revolutionary power.

分手

The split

在爱尔兰，我们常说，爱尔兰所有革命运动的首要议题都是分裂。美国开国元勋们也同样深受分离、嫉妒和怨恨的困扰。托马斯·杰斐逊和亚历山大·汉密尔顿经常发生冲突，他们对如何塑造一个崭新的独立美国持有截然不同的观点。汉密尔顿是一位现代主义者、联邦主义者，也是一位温文尔雅的思想家，他希望美国发展成为一个资本主义国家，在工业、金融和商业领域与欧洲国家竞争。而杰斐逊是一位反联邦主义的共和主义者，他与詹姆斯·麦迪逊和塞缪尔·亚当斯一样，对金融和商业抱有一种怀旧的、近乎原始的看法，他们更倾向于一个田园牧歌式的、与世隔绝的美国，一个不受金钱、市场和贸易腐蚀的美国。

In Ireland we say that the first item on the agenda of every Irish revolutionary movement is the split. The American Founding Fathers were afflicted with the same weakness for separation, jealousy, and rancor. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton clashed regularly and held contrasting views of how to fashion a new independent America. Hamilton, the modernist, federalist, urbane thinker, wanted the US to develop into a capitalist state, competing with the Europeans in industry, finance, and commerce. Jefferson, an anti-federalist republican, together with James Madison and Samuel Adams, had an elegiac, almost primitive view of finance and commerce, preferring an arcadian vision of rural—and largely isolated—America uncorrupted by money, markets, and trade.

杰斐逊崇尚乡村西部风情，而汉密尔顿则拥抱嘻哈文化。杰斐逊的世界观朴实无华，如同母亲亲手制作的苹果派一般温馨——这在民族主义革命领袖中并不罕见。而汉密尔顿则设想建立一个强大的美国联邦，全面参与全球经济，拥有一个强大的中央联邦政府，以本国硬通货征税，并由一支联邦军队捍卫宪法，抵御内外敌人。不难看出，如今共和党的一些思想源于此，那些鼓吹“小政府”的共和党人主张降低税收，减少联邦政府对各州地方事务的干预。这一切都要归咎于杰斐逊。

While Jefferson was country and western, Hamilton was hip hop. Jefferson held a homespun, Mom’s-apple-pie view of the world—not unusual in nationalist revolutionary leaders. Hamilton, on the other hand, envisaged a muscular American federation fully involved in the global economy, with a strong central federal government raising taxes in its own hard currency, backed by a federalist army defending the Constitution against enemies within and without. It’s not hard to see where some of today’s Republican Party thinking originated, with “small government” Republicans agitating for lower taxes and less federal interference in the local affairs of each state. Blame Jefferson.

当时，这些分歧只是在新共和国试图弄清楚驱逐英国人之后该何去何从时才开始显现的。通常情况下，任何革命一旦实现其目标，团结就会瓦解，在没有敌人的情况下，革命联盟就会开始瓦解。在这种情况下，分歧沿着共和派和联邦派的路线出现。

Back then, these divisions were only emerging as the new republic tried to figure out what to do after they’d kicked out the British. Typically, once any revolution has achieved its goals, unity is fractured and, in the absence of an enemy, the revolutionary coalition begins to disintegrate. In this case, the division emerged along republican and federalist lines.

五分之三个人类

Three-fifths of a human

美国革命者中联邦党人和非联邦党人的分裂几乎在独立战争胜利后立即显现。十三个叛乱州如何才能从英国战败的废墟中建立一个新国家？他们的货币——大陆币——正如人们常说的，一文不值。和法国革命者一样，他们也印制了纸币来筹集战争资金。如今获得独立，许多州担心将新获得的权力和主权拱手让给强大的联邦政府。但如果这种权力转移不发生，联邦政府就无法……保卫美国免受敌人侵害或利用国家巨大资源的实力。

The split between the federalist and the nonfederalist wings of the American revolutionaries materialized almost as soon as the War of Independence was won. How could the thirteen rebel states create a new country out of the ashes of the British defeat? Their currency, the Continental, wasn’t, as the saying goes, worth anything. Like the French revolutionaries, they had printed paper money to fund the war. Now independent, many of the states feared surrendering their new power and sovereignty to a powerful federal government. But if such a transfer did not occur, the government wouldn’t have the wherewithal to defend the United States from its enemies or leverage the country’s enormous resources.

正是在这里，军人汉密尔顿蜕变为作家、思想家和演说家。一部国家宪法将促进人们对美国立国之本——或多或少可以说是国家信条——的统一认识。然而，宪法愿景虽然易于作为宏大目标提出，却难以细化。1787年5月，制宪会议在费城召开，乔治·华盛顿和本杰明·富兰克林等政要出席了会议，会上提出了各种方案并进行了讨论。各州担心联邦政府接管，而联邦制政府的支持者则担心中央集权权力不足。一场清晰的分歧由此产生。

Here is where Hamilton the soldier became Hamilton the writer, thinker, and orator. A national constitution would promote a unified view of what America stood for—more or less the creed of the country. But constitutional aspirations, while easy to proclaim as broad goals, are harder to hammer out in detail. Philadelphia was the site of the Constitutional Convention where, in May 1787, with bigwigs George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in attendance, various plans were presented and discussed. Individual states feared a federal takeover, while proponents of a federal style of government feared that the centralized authority would be given insufficient power. A clear division had emerged.

一项被称为“康涅狄格妥协案”的协议带来了某种解决方案，因此，在美国，令我们这些外国人感到困惑的是，每个州在参议院都拥有平等的席位（每个州两名参议员），无论其人口多少。与之相反，众议院的席位分配则与人口规模成正比。但在1787年，开国元勋们是如何评估人口规模的呢？你可能会认为，他们会用传统的方式：统计人口数量。但事实并非如此。在美国历史上最耻辱的篇章之一，黑奴不被算作一个人，而是被算作五分之三个人，而美洲原住民（因为他们不被视为“财产”）则完全不被计入人口——他们也被剥夺了在众议院选举中的投票权。这条五分之三的规则后来使得蓄奴大州得以大幅增加其在众议院的席位。奴隶们被用来增强那些残暴对待他们的人的“民主”合法性。

An agreement that became known as the Connecticut Compromise brought some sort of resolution, which is why in the US, perplexingly to us foreigners, each state has equal representation in the Senate (two senators each) irrespective of its size. In contrast, the House of Representatives reflects population size. But in 1787, how did the Founding Fathers assess population size? In the traditional way, you’d think: by counting the people. But no. In one of the most shameful chapters of American history, Black slaves were counted not as one human but as three-fifths of a person, while Native Americans (because they weren’t “property”) were not counted at all—and they were denied any right to vote in elections to the House of Representatives. This three-fifths rule would subsequently enable the big slave-owning states to greatly increase their representation in the House of Representatives. Slaves were being used to enhance the “democratic” legitimacy of the very people who were brutalizing them.

在费城签署的宪法要求……至少有九个州（当时共十三个州）​​的宪法被废除。这时，作家汉密尔顿出现了。他与詹姆斯·麦迪逊，以及律师约翰·杰伊（尽管后者参与程度较轻）一起，组织了一场影响公众舆论的运动。他选择的宣传手段是报刊。1787年10月27日，他发表了一系列支持宪法的报纸文章，这些文章后来被称为《联邦党人文集》。这些文章也被出版成书，最终收录了85篇文章，其中51篇署名汉密尔顿，29篇署名麦迪逊，5篇署名杰伊。在那个政治小册子盛行的时代，报刊的力量如此强大，以至于汉密尔顿的论证最终赢得了公众舆论的支持。事实上，他完成这项任务的功力如此卓越，以至于在1788年7月，欣喜若狂的纽约市民拉着一艘巨大的花车——“联邦船汉密尔顿号”——穿过城市，甚至有人认真地提议将纽约市更名为“汉密尔顿城” ^。

The Constitution, signed in Philadelphia, required the ratification of at least nine of the thirteen states. Enter Hamilton, the writer. Along with James Madison, and to a lesser extent the lawyer John Jay, Hamilton organized a campaign to influence public opinion. His chosen marketing method was the press. On October 27, 1787, he published the first of a series of newspaper articles in favor of the Constitution. These would become known as The Federalist Papers. The papers were also published in book form, and would ultimately contain eighty-five articles, of which fifty-one were attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and five to Jay. So great was the power of the press in this age of the political pamphlet that Hamilton’s reasoning won over public opinion. In fact, he accomplished that task with such brilliance that a huge float, the Federal Ship Hamilton, was pulled through the city by delighted New Yorkers in July 1788 and serious proposals were presented to have the city renamed Hamiltoniana.⁵

争取民众对宪法的支持是一回事；汉密尔顿随后将注意力转向一个能够每日提醒美国人他们生活在一个新的联邦共和国中的象征——新的美元。没有人会每天都想起自己国家的宪法，但还有什么比口袋里的钱更能提醒人们联邦制的存在呢？

Building support for the Constitution was one thing; Hamilton would turn his attention to a symbol that would remind Americans daily that they lived in a new federal republic—the new American dollar. Nobody thinks about their country’s constitution every day, but what better reminder of federalism than the money in your pocket?

但首先，他必须用一种稍微粗暴一些的手段来镇压反对派。

First, however, he would have to subdue opposition using a slightly blunter instrument.

威士忌叛逆者

The Whiskey Rebels

美国人自称是由清教徒建立的，但他们却酷爱饮酒，而革命后社会和谐的最初考验之一，也正是围绕着酒展开的。在革命时期，美国乡村遍布着壶式蒸馏威士忌酒厂。当地人酿造着他们的威士忌。这些酒厂酿造的威士忌品质和纯度参差不齐，实际上就是私酿酒，只是没有正式名称而已。这些酒厂将劣质酒销往各个农耕社区以及当地的城镇。1791年，财政部长汉密尔顿资金短缺，于是像历任财政部长一样，他决定对这种“老牌可靠”的酒类征税。^每个财政官员都知道，对酒类征税是轻而易举的事。但当地的乡民们却不肯罢休。宾夕法尼亚西部的威士忌叛乱分子组建了民兵，武装起来，袭击了一些试图提高税收的地方官员，对刚刚成立的联邦政府构成了直接威胁。

For a nation supposedly founded by Puritans, Americans love a drink, and one of the first tests of postrevolutionary harmony emerged over booze. In revolutionary times, rural America was full of pot-still whiskey distilleries. Locals manufactured their own whiskeys with varying degrees of quality and purity. Moonshine in all but name, these distilleries sold hooch throughout farming communities and in the local towns and cities. In 1791, Treasury Secretary Hamilton was short of money and, as finance ministers would do time and again, he decided to tax that “old reliable,” whiskey.⁶ Every treasurer knows taxing grog is a no-brainer. But the local backwoodsmen weren’t having it. Whiskey insurgents in western Pennsylvania formed militias, armed themselves, and attacked some local officials attempting to raise the tax, posing a direct threat to the fledgling federal government.

面对昔日爱国者可能发动的武装叛乱，乔治·华盛顿深知局势的脆弱，明白这个新生的州正处于进退两难的境地。他们赢得独立战争的原则是拒绝向遥远的英国王室纳税，因此他们很难转而征税来资助一个遥远的中央联邦政府。但是，就像法国大革命一样，一旦街垒上的激情消退，政府的关注点就从振奋人心的口号转移到了空空如也的国库。没有税收，政府就无法运转。面对这些桀骜不驯、酗酒成性的民兵，联邦政府岌岌可危，随时可能沦为笑柄。华盛顿犹豫不决。面对公开叛乱和民众大规模拒缴联邦税，他的拖延进一步损害了这个新生州在桀骜不驯的公民心中的声誉。谁会先退缩呢？

Faced with the prospect of armed rebellion from former patriots, George Washington, appreciating the fragility of the situation, understood that the new state was in a bind. They had won the War of Independence based on the principle of not paying taxes to the remote Crown, so they could hardly turn around and levy taxes to finance a remote centralized federal government. But, as with the French Revolution, once the excitement of the barricades had passed, the government’s concerns had shifted from rousing slogans to empty coffers. Without tax revenue, government couldn’t operate. Faced with these uppity whiskey-driven militias, the federal government was in danger of becoming a joke. Washington dithered. Foot dragging in the face of an open rebellion and mass refusal to pay federal tax further besmirched the new state’s reputation among its unruly citizens. Who would blink first?

汉密尔顿敦促华盛顿镇压这些私酿酒叛乱分子。华盛顿勉强同意了。1794年，在负责军队后勤补给的汉密尔顿的陪同下，华盛顿率领新组建的美国军队进入宾夕法尼亚州，对抗本州人民。叛乱很快被镇压。叛乱被镇压，头目被监禁。华盛顿后来赦免了他们中的大多数人，但联邦军队迅速镇压民兵，让所有人意识到谁才是老大。联邦政府对各州采取行动，并取得了胜利。在第一次考验，第一次叛乱中，中央政府挺身而出。美国，这个后来颁布禁酒令的国家，正是在对这场酒类叛乱的回应中形成的。

Hamilton urged Washington to face down these pot-still insurrectionists. Reluctantly, Washington acceded. Accompanied by Hamilton, who organized the logistics of provisioning the troops, Washington led the new US army into Pennsylvania in 1794, against its own people. The revolt was quickly put down, and the ringleaders imprisoned. Washington later pardoned most of them, but the federal army’s rapid suppression of the militia made everyone realize who was boss. The feds moved against the states and the feds won. In its first test, its first insurgency, the central government stood up. America, the country that would later introduce Prohibition, was forged by the reaction to a booze rebellion.

正是汉密尔顿精心策划了这场联邦力量的展示，他深谙建立联邦共和国需要循序渐进。首先要平息地方反对势力，然后才能围绕联邦货币团结全国。有了货币，公民就能心甘情愿地效忠联邦。联邦政府在展现了其军事力量的粗暴一面之后，将展现更为微妙、更为震撼的手段——货币的力量。如果说战争是汉密尔顿的利剑，那么货币就是他的慰藉。

It was Hamilton who masterminded this federal show of strength, understanding that creating a federal republic is done piece by piece. You first quell local opposition and then you unify the country around a federal currency. With money, citizens’ allegiance to the federation can be attracted willingly. Having shown the crude end of its power with the military, the federal government would display something more nuanced and more impressive, and that was the power of money. If war was Hamilton’s rapier, money would be his balm.

美元

The dollar

作为开国元勋中最杰出的经济学家，汉密尔顿深知，谈论人权和追求幸福固然重要，但维系美国的团结需要一些切实可行的东西。如果没有某种具有约束力的组织工具，共和国及其相互竞争的各州就可能分崩离析。而这种工具就是货币。对于这个新生的联邦共和国而言，一种新的货币将是其合法性的核心。

The finest economic brain among the Founding Fathers, Hamilton knew that talk of human rights and the pursuit of happiness was all very well, but something tangible was required to hold the United States together. Without some binding organizational tool, the republic and its competing states might unravel. That tool would be money. And central to the legitimacy of the new federal republic would be a new currency.

纵观历史，从亚历山大大帝时代起，金钱象征的意义就远不止于简单的交换。金钱代表着政治权力，在亚历山大庞大的帝国中，臣民们只要看到钱币上印着他的头像，就知道谁才是统治者。时至今日，金钱依然象征着……可以是像英镑那样的国家，也可以是像欧元那样的更大的超国家政治项目。

Throughout history, going right back to Alexander the Great, money has symbolized something bigger than mere exchange. Money is political power and all across Alexander’s vast empire, his subjects knew who the boss was when they saw his face on the coins. To this day, money symbolizes the nation, as is the case with sterling, or a greater supranational political project, as with the euro.

对于美利坚共和国的缔造者而言，货币象征着新生的国家和新的开始。由于货币是实实在在的，而且我们每天都在使用，它便能起到凝聚其他制度（例如税收制度）的作用，从而进一步巩固国家。对于像美利坚共和国这样幅员辽阔的国家而言，货币以一种比宪法更为平凡却也更为强大的方式，缔造了人们对新国家的忠诚。如果说宪法是信条，那么货币则是神圣的象征——或者正如伟大的法国早期美国史学家亚历克西·德·托克维尔几年后所观察到的那样，货币是这个新生共和国的宗教^。

For the founders of the American republic, the currency would be emblematic of the new country and a new beginning. Because money is tangible, and we use it every day, it serves as a gelling agent for other institutions, such as the tax system, which further bolsters the state. For a nation the size of the American republic, money created an allegiance to the new country in a more mundane and yet powerful way than a constitution. While the Constitution may have been the creed, money was the sacrament—or you might say, as the great French chronicler of the early United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, was to observe a few years later, that money was the religion of the new republic.⁷

汉密尔顿深知新货币必须具有公信力，因此将美元与当时的全球标准货币——西班牙银元——挂钩。值得注意的是，在英国统治时期，如今被称为美国东北部的地区长期面临硬币短缺的问题：当地商业以杂货商、酒馆老板或其他商人为中心，他们提供信贷，并在每隔几个月结算一次的借贷交易中抽取佣金。作为殖民地，这些州只能使用伦敦铸造的英国硬币——如果他们能够获得这些硬币的话——而这些硬币只能通过贸易流入美国。殖民地要想拥有硬币盈余，就必须与殖民者保持持续的巨额贸易顺差——但殖民者的目的当然是廉价地从殖民地掠夺资源。由于英国试图从美国购买廉价商品，同时又试图向殖民地出售昂贵的商品，因此总有大量硬币从美国流向英国，导致殖民地硬币短缺。硬通货。17世纪末，英国更进一步，禁止从英国出口黄金和白银，进一步收紧了对美洲殖民地的货币管制。但西班牙人正是在这里介入的。

Understanding that the new currency needed to be credible, Hamilton linked the US dollar to the Spanish dollar, which was then a type of global standard. It is important to appreciate that, under the British, the region we would now refer to as the northeast of the United States suffered constantly from a lack of coins: local commerce centered around a grocer, publican, or other trader who extended credit and took a cut when all these debits and credits were settled every few months. As colonies, these states were using British coins minted in London—if they could get their hands on them—which would only find their way to the US via trade. For there to be a surplus of coins in the colonies, the colonies would have had to run a large and ongoing trade surplus with the colonizer—but, of course, the aim of the colonizers was to extract resources cheaply from the colony. As the British were trying to buy cheap stuff from America while trying to sell the colonized expensive stuff in return, there was always a flow of coins out of America to Britain, leaving the colonies starved of hard currency. In the late seventeenth century, the British went one further and prohibited the export of gold and silver from Britain, further tightening the monetary noose around its American colonies. But here’s where the Spaniards came in.

在之前的两个世纪里，西属美洲一直是美洲乃至整个美洲大部分硬币以及世界上大部分新铸造白银的来源地。西班牙将拥有丰富银矿的墨西哥和秘鲁变成了巨型造币厂，铸造银币：秘鲁的波托西银矿在西班牙语中被称为“金钱之山”，在¹⁵⁵⁶年至1783年间，该矿生产了近5万吨纯银。这些银币最初被称为雷亚尔（reals，源自西班牙语“皇家”），并在世界各地流通。 （如今，许多阿拉伯国家以及巴西的货币仍然被称为雷亚尔或里亚尔，这是古西班牙语词汇的衍生词。）到了十八世纪，这些西班牙硬币在美洲流通最为广泛，被称为“银元”——这个日耳曼语名称最终源自约阿希姆斯塔尔，那里是欧洲产量最高的银矿所在地，在十六至十八世纪期间生产了数百万枚“塔勒”硬币。

For the preceding two centuries, Spanish America had been the source of most of the coinage in the Americas more widely, and most of the new silver in the world. Spain had turned Mexico and Peru, with their silver deposits, into giant mints, making silver coins: the mine of Potosí in Peru was referred to in Spanish as “the mountain of money,”⁸ and between 1556 and 1783 it produced almost 50,000 tons of pure silver. The coins were originally known as reals (after the Spanish for “royal”), and were traded all over the world. (Today, the currencies of a number of Arabic countries as well as Brazil are still called the real or riyal, a derivative of the old Spanish term.) By the eighteenth century, these Spanish coins were the most widely used in the Americas and were called the “silver dollar”—a Germanic name ultimately derived from Joachimsthal, the site of Europe’s most productive silver mines, which produced millions of “thaler” coins between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

十八世纪，后来成为美国的北部各州与西印度群岛保持着贸易顺差——出售小麦、猪肉、烟斗坯料和沥青——这意味着当时流通着大量的西班牙银元。新成立的美国政府规定，新的美元将与这些西班牙银元等值。在汉密尔顿的领导下，美国建立了一个新的造币厂。由于美洲殖民地自身没有金银，造币厂便将当时流通的西班牙银元熔化后重新铸造。在铸造过程中，汉密尔顿发现这些硬币中含有相当奇怪的成分。^西班牙银元含银量为371.5格令，此后每一枚美国银元都含有这个不同寻常的银量。9美国非常务实地没有重新铸造每一枚西班牙银元；直到1850年左右，美国都允许西班牙银元流通，因为人人都知道它们的价值与美元相同。银元一直是美国的标准货币，直到南北战争之后。

During the eighteenth century, the northern states of what would become the US ran a trade surplus with the West Indies—selling wheat, pork, pipe staves, and pitch—which meant there was a good number of Spanish silver dollars in circulation. The new US government stipulated that the new American dollar would be equivalent to this Spanish silver dollar. Under Hamilton, a new mint was instituted and, as the American colonies had no access to silver or gold of their own, the mint melted down Spanish currency already in circulation and restamped it. During the minting process, Hamilton found that the coins contained a rather bizarre amount of 371.5 grains of silver, and from then on every American silver dollar contained that same unusual amount.⁹ The United States quite pragmatically didn’t bother reminting every single Spanish dollar; right up until around 1850 it allowed the Spanish coins to circulate because everyone knew they were worth the same as the US dollar. The silver dollar remained the American standard coin until after the Civil War.

硬通货和债务

Hard money and debt

目睹了大陆货币的恶性通货膨胀，汉密尔顿深知纸币对这个新生国家来说风险极大，至少在初期应该避免使用。新共和国的公民需要对新货币的价值充满信心，即便这意味着美国的生死存亡将取决于贸易。由于缺乏真正的国内金银来源，汉密尔顿明白，如果不通过自身努力来维持新货币的价值，就无法做到这一点。

Having witnessed the hyperinflation of the Continental currency, Hamilton appreciated that paper money was a risky proposition for the new state, and should be avoided, at least at the outset. The citizens of the new republic needed to have confidence in the value of their new currency, even if it meant that the US would have to live and die by trade. Without any real domestic sources of silver and gold, Hamilton knew they couldn’t maintain the value of the new currency without earning it.

货币纪律迫使美国在金融领域进行非同寻常的创新，而汉密尔顿正是这些创新的先锋。在汉密尔顿之前，各州各自为政，发行债券，在破产的大陆银行进行交易，从而彻底破坏了民众对银行和金融的信任。汉密尔顿希望鼓励十三个州接受在联邦层面建立一个更强大的经济实体的宏伟蓝图。负债累累的州和借贷较少的州之间，对于如何以及何时分配全部债务负担存在着相当大的分歧。在这些分歧背后，还存在着另一个问题……对于那些曾因税收问题而拿起武器反抗英国的人民，究竟该如何征税？“无代表不纳税”曾是他们的战斗口号。如今他们有了代表权，就必须确定合适的税收结构，以偿还战争期间积累的债务。

Monetary discipline forced America to become unusually innovative in finance, and Hamilton was at the forefront of these innovations. Before Hamilton, each state had its own approach to finance, issuing debts, trading in the bankrupt Continental, and thereby completely undermining the citizens’ trust in banks and finance. Hamilton wanted to encourage the thirteen states to buy into the bigger picture of establishing a more powerful economic entity at the federal level. There were considerable differences of opinion between the heavily indebted states and those who had borrowed less as to how and when the burden of the total debt should be allocated. Behind these disagreements there was the additional issue of what type of taxation could be imposed on a people who had taken up arms against the British on the very issue of taxation. “No taxation without representation” had been their battle cry. Now they had representation, they had to determine the appropriate structure for taxation to repay the debts accumulated during the war.

汉密尔顿深受当时英国和荷兰处理此问题的做法的影响，认为偿还国债对任何国家的稳定都至关重要：如果国家债务管理得当，没有违约的风险，这将成为国家财政的基石。他精确计算出，未偿债务为7500万美元，每年利息支出为460万美元。 ¹⁰为了提振美国债务市场的信誉，汉密尔顿采取了两项大胆的举措。首先，他决定将13个州的债务合并为新的联邦债务。其次，即使他没有义务这样做，联邦债务也将全额偿还——实际上，这相当于送给那些不指望收回全部贷款的债权人一份大礼，尤其是在战后。通过将所有债务并入联邦债务，他确保了美国不会出现州债务与联邦债务在国际货币和债券市场上竞争的情况。从象征意义上讲，这也巩固了联邦凌驾于各州之上的地位。所有这些都加速了汉密尔顿认为对美国政治和经济发展至关重要的中央集权进程。

Hamilton, greatly influenced by the contemporary British and Dutch approaches to this issue, believed that funding the national debt was essential to the stability of any country: if the country’s debt was well managed, with no fear of default, this would be the cornerstone of the national finances. He calculated precisely that there was $75 million of debt outstanding and annual interest payments of $4.6 million.¹⁰ To inject credibility into the American debt markets, Hamilton made two audacious moves. First, he decided that the debts of the thirteen individual states should be lumped together into new federal debt. Second, the federal debt would be repaid in full even though he didn’t have to do this—in effect, this was a gift to lenders who didn’t expect to get all their money back, particularly after a war. By subsuming all the debts into federal debt, he ensured that America would not have state debt competing with federal debt on the international money and bond markets. Symbolically, it also underpinned the primacy of the federation over the states. All of this served to accelerate the centralization process that Hamilton saw as crucial to the political and economic development of the United States.

在确立了美元体系并创建了包含中央联邦债务市场的联邦税收体系之后，精力充沛的汉密尔顿着手建立中央银行。与英格兰银行一样，中央银行将由私人所有，1000万美元的启动资金中有80%将由私人持有。汉密尔顿还设立了偿债基金，以协助管理国家债务。表面上看，偿债基金的作用是预留资金用于偿还国债，但它的作用远不止于此。作为一个黄金和白银储备匮乏的国家，汉密尔顿深知，他预期的美国经济增长速度必然需要国际借贷。设立一个由国内融资的“应急基金”可以提升美国政府债券的吸引力，因为国内外投资者都知道，总会有最终的贷款人：美国银行及其偿债基金。 ¹¹设立一个集中的偿债基金，就像房间里有一位成年人，可以在市场动荡时稳定市场。在偿债基金的掩护下，汉密尔顿还授权美国银行在金融市场流动性不足时充当最终贷款人——这种危险的现象，我们在货币的故事中已经多次看到。

Having established the dollar and created a federal tax system with a centralized federal debt market, the energetic Hamilton moved to establish a central bank. Like the Bank of England, it would be privately owned, with 80 percent of the $10 million of seed capital held in private hands. Hamilton also created a sinking fund to assist in the management of the national debt. Ostensibly, the role of the sinking fund was to put aside money to pay off the national debt over time, but it did more than that. As a country with little gold or silver, Hamilton knew the growth rates he anticipated for America would demand some borrowing internationally. Having a “rainy day” fund, locally financed, would increase the attractiveness of US government securities because investors, both domestic and foreign, would know there was always a buyer of last resort: the Bank of the United States and its sinking fund.¹¹ Having a centralized sinking fund was like having an adult in the room who could stabilize the market when it got jittery. Under the cover of the fund, Hamilton was also able to authorize the Bank of the United States to act as lender of last resort when financial markets ran short of liquidity—a dangerous phenomenon that we have seen multiple times in this story of money.

金钱与美国基因

Money and the American DNA

从独立战争的混乱和随之而来的恶性通货膨胀——更不用说新共和国诞生的阵痛——到此后几十年美国的经济表现，可谓令人瞩目。短短四十年内，人均收入就超过了英国。而且，请记住，这并非今日的英国——而是正处于工业革命和帝国扩张时期的英国，那时全球大片地区都被染成了红色。

From the chaos of the War of Independence and the hyperinflation that followed it—not to mention the birthing pains of a new republic—the economic performance of the United States in the following decades was remarkable. Income per head surpassed Britain within forty years. And remember this wasn’t the Britain of today—this was the Britain of both the industrial revolution and empire, when vast swaths of the globe were colored red.

汉密尔顿对美国的经济命运充满憧憬，他告诉塔列朗，他预见到“有朝一日——或许还很遥远——美国将会建立起像旧世界曾经存在过的那种大型市场。” ^¹²毫不夸张地说，他一手缔造了……为了实现这一梦想，美国构建了完善的金融体系。如果没有亚历山大·汉密尔顿在财政部五年间所做的艰苦卓绝的努力，美国经济不太可能如此迅猛地腾飞。这并非意味着经济不会腾飞，而是说它可能不会在如此短的时间内实现腾飞。汉密尔顿入主财政部时，美国正处于破产边缘；而当他离开时，他已经解决了美国的政府债务问题，公共财政趋于稳定，国家也拥有了强势的新货币，这既保障了储户的资金安全，也让借款人能够为其投资融资。^此外，美国还拥有一个完善的证券市场，能够向外国投资者出售债券，这些投资者相信这个新生国家能够自给自足。由此产生的资本流入被用于经济扩张。

Infused with a sense of the economic destiny of the United States, Hamilton told Talleyrand that he foresaw “the day when—and it is perhaps very remote—great markets, such as formerly existed in the old world, will be established in America.”¹² It’s not too far a stretch to say that he built the financial architecture to achieve this dream. Without the groundwork laid by Alexander Hamilton during his frenetic five years at the Treasury, it’s unlikely that the United States’ economy would have taken off quite so impressively. That is not to say it wouldn’t have happened, but possibly it wouldn’t have happened when it did and so quickly. The day Hamilton walked into the Treasury, the country was bankrupt; by the time he left he had sorted out America’s government debt, the public finances were stable and the country had a strong new currency, giving savers security while allowing borrowers to finance their investments.¹³ America also had a proper securities market and was able to sell its bonds to foreigners, who trusted the new state to pay its way. The resulting inflows of capital were used to finance expansion.

美国人对金钱和利润的追求，正如欧洲游客经常评论的那样，展现出一种非凡的创业能力和冒险精神。这激发了经济活力，吸引欧洲人离开旧世界，前往新世界闯荡。汉密尔顿的偿债基金确保投资者相信美国会支持政府债券市场，从而鼓励资本和人才流入美国。当欧洲陷入十九世纪初的意识形态战争时，美国凭借其优越的地理位置、运转良好的银行体系和事实上的中央银行，在相对封闭的环境中，开始专注于创造财富。

Americans, revealing their love of money and profit so regularly commented on by European visitors, displayed an uncanny ability to form companies and take a risk. This created an economic excitement that enticed Europeans to leave the Old World and have a go in the new one. Hamilton’s sinking fund ensured that investors knew the US would support the government debt market, encouraging capital as well as talent to flow into America. While Europe became engulfed in the ideological wars of the early nineteenth century, America, in splendid isolation, with a functioning banking system and a de facto central bank, got down to the business of making money.

19世纪初的美国是一个弱肉强食的资本主义共和国，经济高速发展。亚历克西·德·托克维尔在1831年观察到：“深入了解美国人的民族性格，就会发现他们衡量世间万物价值的唯一标准就是：它能带来多少金钱。” ¹⁴金钱的承诺过去是，现在仍然是个人财富的可能性。社会向上流动。在欧洲，这种个人主义威胁到了社会契约——君主制、阶级制度以及聪明人难以逾越的社会天花板。在美国，情况则大不相同：金钱可以抹去一个人的出身，创造新的现实。对欧洲人来说，美国是白手起家者的国度。就像数百万离开爱尔兰前往美国的同胞一样，金钱的承诺对他们来说一定有着难以抗拒的诱惑力，而汉密尔顿本人也曾是一名贫穷的移民，他对此深有体会。

A capitalist republic, red in tooth and claw, America of the early 1800s was an economy on steroids. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1831 that, “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money it will bring in.”¹⁴ Money’s promise was, and still is, the possibility of personal upward social mobility. In Europe, such individualism threatened the social contract—the monarchies, the class system, and the social ceiling beyond which a smart man or woman would find it difficult to climb. In America, this was less true: with money a person could obliterate their origins and create a new reality. For Europeans, America was the country of the self-made man. Like the millions of my own countrymen and -women who left Ireland for America, this promise of money must have been unbelievably seductive and Hamilton, himself once a poor migrant, appreciated this.

然而，汉密尔顿对他的同胞的了解也仅限于此。虽然他们对金钱的开放态度与谨慎的欧洲人截然不同，但美国人——作为一个奴隶主国家——在其他方面却有着异常清教徒式的道德观，亚历山大·汉密尔顿即将发现这一点。

Yet Hamilton only understood his compatriots up to a point. While their expansive view of money differed from that of cautious Europeans, Americans—for a nation of slave owners—had unusually puritanical ethics in other areas, as Alexander Hamilton was about to find out.

性丑闻

The sex scandal

像许多才华横溢的政治家一样，本可成为总统的汉密尔顿，其拥护者和反对者一样多。这位被视为乔治·华盛顿的当然接班人的金融天才，却被他的联邦党同僚约翰·亚当斯击败。亚当斯刻意没有邀请他作为副总统参加1796年的总统大选。当然，汉密尔顿也遭到了另一方的杰斐逊的厌恶。杰斐逊领导着一个名为民主共和党的新兴政党，该党更倾向于农业，对商业的关注度较低。政治中，这一切似乎都在意料之中。

Like many talented politicians, Hamilton, the man who could have been president, created as many detractors as admirers. Seen as an obvious successor to George Washington, this monetary genius was outmaneuvered by his federalist colleague John Adams, who pointedly didn’t ask him to run in the 1796 election as his vice president. Of course, Hamilton was also disliked by Jefferson on the other side, leader of a new party called the Democratic Republicans, more agrarian and less committed to commerce. So far so normal in politics.

但在1797年，在他无可指摘的财政部长任期结束后，汉密尔顿却给了他的批评者们他们想要的：民众的愤怒。他发现自己身处美国第一起公开性丑闻的中心。他与玛丽亚·雷诺兹有染——已婚妇女。更令人啼笑皆非的是，雷诺兹的丈夫知晓这段不正当关系，并以此勒索汉密尔顿。汉密尔顿觊觎国家最高领导人的野心，却因管不住自己的下半身而受挫。十八世纪共和制下的美国对性的态度与共和制下的法国截然不同，这种差异一直延续至今。汉密尔顿的朋友塔列朗将自己的风流韵事视为巴黎人的荣耀勋章。事实上，这位好色的主教很可能从他的各种不正当关系中获益，这在法国权贵中屡见不鲜。

But in 1797, after his unimpeachable time in the Treasury, Hamilton gave his detractors what they wanted: popular outrage. He found himself at the center of America’s first public sex scandal. He’d been having an affair with Maria Reynolds—a married woman. And, in a bit of classic intrigue, Reynolds’s husband, aware of the illicit relationship, had been blackmailing Hamilton. Hamilton’s ambitions for the highest office in the land were thwarted by his inability to keep his trousers zipped. Attitudes to sex in eighteenth-century republican America were very different to those in republican France, a contrast which endures to this day. Hamilton’s friend Talleyrand flaunted his indiscretions as a Parisian badge of honor. In fact, the philandering bishop probably benefited from his various illicit dalliances, as has often been the case with powerful French men.

1804年，一向以文笔犀利著称的汉密尔顿，在纽约州州长竞选期间，发表了一系列小册子，抨击他的众多竞争对手之一——副总统阿伦·伯尔。当时的竞选异常激烈。伯尔指责汉密尔顿诽谤他，并声称只有决斗才能解决问题。人们普遍认为，两人只会走个过场。但伯尔却另有打算。他意图杀人，1804年7月11日，这位美国副总统刺杀了这位前财政部长。

In 1804, Hamilton, always vituperative with the pen, wrote a series of pamphlets denouncing one of his many rivals, Vice President Aaron Burr, during a particularly vicious election campaign for governor of New York. Burr accused Hamilton of slandering him and claimed only a duel would settle things. It was widely expected that both men would only go through the motions. But Burr had different notions. He aimed to kill, and on July 11, 1804, the vice president of the United States murdered the former treasury secretary.

只有在美国才会发生。

Only in America.

货币和计量

Money and measurements

约瑟夫·罗斯的小说《度量衡》的故事始于1857年的加利西亚，当时加利西亚是奥地利帝国的一个省份，位于如今的波兰和乌克兰之间。这里居住着波兰人、犹太人、乌克兰人、鲁塞尼亚人，以及零星的奥地利官僚。在长达近一百五十年的时间里，加利西亚一直由维也纳统治，直到1918年。加利西亚被设计为奥地利帝国和俄罗斯帝国之间的缓冲地带，这片边陲之地吸引了形形色色的小贩、逃兵和走私贩子——这里未必会欢迎国家特工的到来，尤其是一位负责审查当地人商业诚信的特工。

Joseph Roth’s novel Weights and Measures begins in 1857 in Galicia, a province of the Austrian Empire, sandwiched between what is now Poland and Ukraine. Home to Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, and the odd smattering of Austrian bureaucrats, Galicia was governed for nearly one hundred fifty years by Vienna, until 1918. Designed as a buffer between the Austrian and Russian empires, Galicia’s frontier-land attracted a mix of peddlers, draft dodgers, and contraband dealers—not a place that would necessarily welcome an agent of the state, particularly one whose job it was to second-guess the locals’ commercial integrity.

罗斯笔下的主人公艾本舒茨负责监督从英制计量单位向十进制计量单位的过渡，奥地利人引入十进制是为了统一帝国的货币和计量体系。正如罗斯所描述的，艾本舒茨在武装警察的协助下，负责惩罚欺诈者。对于当地人来说，他们彼此之间进行交易……多年来，根本没有必要推行这种十进制改革。这难道不是一种官僚主义的干预吗？用罗斯的话来说：

Roth’s protagonist, Eibenschütz, was charged with overseeing the transition from imperial measurements to decimalization introduced by the Austrians to standardize the empire’s monetary and measurement systems. As Roth describes it, Eibenschütz’s role, aided by armed policemen, was to punish cheats. For the locals, having traded with each other for years, there was no need for this decimalization innovation. What was it other than some bureaucratic intrusion? In Roth’s words:

很久以前，人们用的是真正的度量衡，现在只有秤了。以前人们用手臂来量布匹，众所周知，从紧握的拳头到手肘，一个男人的手臂长度正好是一肘，不多也不少……在这一带，许多人根本不用度量衡。他们用手称重，用眼睛测量^。

A long time ago there had been real measurements, now there were only scales. Cloth had been measured with the arm, and as all the world knows, a man’s arm from his closed fist to his elbow, measured an ell no more and no less … in these parts there were many folk who had no use for weights and measures. They weighed in the hand and measured with the eye.¹

在货币和计量领域，如同在科学领域一样，十九世纪的世界正从猜测和声誉走向精确和客观。十进制最终被奥地利帝国采纳，而其推动力很大程度上要归功于汉密尔顿领导下的美国革命。

In money and measurement, as in science, the nineteenth-century world was moving from guesswork and reputation to precision and objectivity. Eventually adopted by the Austrian Empire, decimalization owes much of its impetus to Hamilton’s revolutionary America.

美元是世界上第一种完全十进制化的货币，于1792年由汉密尔顿的《铸币法案》正式确立。新生的美国公民希望加强与英国帝国的分离，并抹去新共和国身上任何英国的痕迹。克朗、四分之一便士和金币听起来太像英国货币，因此美国引入了一种新的十进制货币，美元可以分为100美分（源自拉丁语“百”）。 ²一角硬币则源自古法语中表示“十分之一”的表达方式，这种说法在北美广袤的法语区广泛使用。

The US dollar was the world’s first completely decimalized currency, enshrined in 1792 by Hamilton’s Coinage Act. Citizens of the new US wanted to reinforce their separation from imperial Britain and erase any trace of it from the new republic. Crowns, farthings, and sovereigns sounded too English, so the United States introduced a new decimal currency with the dollar divisible into 100 cents (from the Latin for “hundred”).² The dime came from the Old French expression for “one tenth,” which would have been used within the vast French-speaking areas of North America.

十进制化是一项革命性的举措，欧洲的旧政权也持此观点。尽管十进制逻辑合理，但他们并不打算向这些新来者低头，至少一开始是这样。无论他们的货币体系多么复杂，十进制化都无法改变他们的想法。在这样的体制下，没有一个戴假发的君主主义者会考虑改变货币面额。

Decimalization was a revolutionary statement and was seen as such by the old regimes in Europe who, despite decimal’s logic, were not about to bow to these new kids on the block, at least at first. No matter how convoluted their monetary system, no bewigged monarchist entertained the thought of changing their currency denomination.

拿破仑战争是一场思想之战：一方是代表现代的共和主义，另一方是代表过去的君主制。在十八世纪和十九世纪初动荡的局势中，关于货币面额的争论反映了保守派和激进派之间在政治、社会和思想上的分歧。正如创造“保守主义”一词的爱尔兰人埃德蒙·伯克所言，保守主义的本质在于保守。对保守主义者而言，传统至上，进步是一个循序渐进的过程，需要不断积累微小的成就，维护行之有效的制度，并对传统表示敬意。除了维护古老的货币面额之外，保守主义还包含一系列其他信念，例如世袭贵族、国教以及君主制。从本质上讲，保守主义者是回顾过去的，他们从过去汲取合法性，而不是拥抱未来。但在以创新为驱动的科学领域，传统的桎梏可能会阻碍进步和发现。在十九世纪，激进派鼓吹新事物和新可能性，而保守派则固守久经考验的旧方法。资金之争亦是如此。

The Napoleonic Wars were a battle for ideas: on the one side, republicanism, representing the modern; and on the other, monarchy, representing the past. In the convulsive cauldron of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, arguments about currency denomination reflected the political, social, and intellectual fault line between conservatives and radicals. The essence of conservatism is to conserve, as the Irishman who coined the term, Edmund Burke, espoused. For conservatives, tradition is valued, and progress is a process of building on small gains, preserving that which works and genuflecting to heritage. Along with preserving arcane currency denominations came a suite of other conservative beliefs including hereditary peerages, established churches, and, naturally, monarchies. Conservatives are by implication backward-looking, deriving legitimacy from what went before as opposed to embracing what might be to come. But in the innovation-driven world of science, the tyranny of tradition can be detrimental for progress and discovery. In the nineteenth century, radicals would agitate for the new and the possible, while conservatives would hanker after the tried and tested. The battle for money was no different.

如果说革命时期的美国在货币方面接受了十进制，那么革命时期的法国则以狂热的热情拥抱了它。法国人将所有事物都实行了十进制，并通过拿破仑的革命军队将这套逻辑清晰、易于理解的体系输出到整个欧洲——从意大利到德国。对法国人来说，十进制是民主和自由的体现，它打破了旧君主制体系的僵化遗留。而且，他们并没有将十进制革命局限于货币和度量衡。在法国革命历法中，一周是……一年由七天改为十天（称为“十日制”），一天有十个小时。革命性的一小时为100分1分100秒。一年仍然有十二个月，但从十月开始。所有提及宗教节日、罗马皇帝或神祇的内容都被删除，取而代之的是描述当时天气状况的内容。法国人将原先的八月命名为“热月”（Thermidor），意为“炎热的月份”，取代了之前提及的罗马皇帝奥古斯都。法国各方面的十进制化持续了十多年，尽管一些更具实验性的方面被放弃，但十进制化的硬币、重量和计量单位仍然保留了下来。

If revolutionary America had embraced decimalization when it came to money, revolutionary France adopted it with fanatical zeal. The French decimalized everything and exported this logical and easy-to-comprehend system all over Europe—from Italy to Germany—via Napoleon’s revolutionary army. To the French, decimalisation was an expression of democracy and liberty, smashing through the awkward inheritance of the old monarchical system. And they didn’t limit the decimal revolution to money and weights alone. In the French revolutionary calendar, a week was changed from seven to ten days (to be called a décade), and the day consisted of ten hours. A revolutionary hour was 100 minutes and a minute, 100 seconds. The year still contained twelve months but began in October. All references to religious feasts or Roman emperors or deities were removed and replaced with references to the prevailing weather at that time of year. The French took what used to be August and named it Thermidor, meaning “the hot month,” replacing the old reference to Augustus, the Roman emperor. The immersive decimalization of all things French lasted for over ten years and although some of the more experimental aspects were abandoned, decimalized coins, weights, and measurements persisted.

十进制系统的便捷性和计算的简易性对科学家和革命者都极具吸引力。基于十位和百位的公制系统之美在于其易于标准化和比较，同时也将经验主义推向了前沿。机械师、技术人员和商人尤其青睐公制系统，因为它能够实现精确性，并最终提高生产力。随着时间的推移，各国纷纷采用公制。随着19世纪科学和探索的蓬勃发展，公制成为一种被所有人理解的国际通用语言。尽管英国人坚持己见（毕竟它是君主制国家），但在货币计量方面，大多数其他国家最终都与革命时期的美国和法国保持一致。尽管法国在战场上屡战屡败，美国也因隔海相望而与世隔绝，但它们的革命仍然占据了19世纪人们的思想中心。十进制化不仅影响着我们的贸易方式，也影响着我们的思维方式。

The convenience and ease of calculation in the decimalized system proved compelling for scientists and revolutionaries alike. The beauty of the metric system based on tens and hundreds is that it makes standardization and comparison easy. It also puts empiricism to the fore. Mechanics, technicians, and businesspeople were particularly taken by the metric system as it allowed for precision and, ultimately, increased productivity. Over time, country after country adopted it. As science and inquiry took off in the nineteenth century, metric became an international grammar understood by everyone. While the British held out (it was a monarchy after all), in monetary measurements most other countries would fall in line with revolutionary America and France. Despite France’s losses on the battlefield, and America being isolated beyond an ocean, their revolutions occupied nineteenth-century minds. Decimalization would affect not just how we traded but how we thought.

金钱的心理游戏

Money’s mind games

十八世纪的商业革命让位于十九世纪的工业革命，而工业革命本身又是与之同步发展的科学发现时代的产物。货币在这一转变中扮演了重要角色，它不仅是经济扩张的媒介，也改变了人类的心理。货币及其管理方式在日常生活中变得日益重要。工业的发展和随之而来的工业工资的普及意味着越来越多的人开始使用货币，日常生活中越来越多的事物也与货币息息相关：例如，一个产业工人可能会意识到，他八小时的工作收入相当于五天的房租，或者相当于他心仪的那件大衣的价格。

The commercial revolution of the eighteenth century gave way to the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, itself a function of the age of scientific discovery which coevolved with it. Money played a significant role in this shift, not just as the mediator of economic expansion, but also in the way it altered human psychology. Money and how to manage it became increasingly important in everyday lives. The growth of industry and the accompanying spread of industrial wages meant a greater number of people were using money, and more things in daily life were now connected and defined by money: for example, it might occur to an industrial worker that the money they can earn through eight hours’ work equals five days’ rent, or the price of that overcoat they have their eye on.

货币十进制化使更多人具备了数学能力，而人口的数学能力越强，就越容易接受以测量为支撑的科学突破。这与我们观察到的引入零的过程类似，但规模要大得多。每个口袋里有硬币的人都能更轻松地进行乘以十和乘以百的运算。今天我们或许很难理解这在人们的思维方式上带来了多么巨大的改变。我们大脑的新区域被启用：在十进制化之前，普通人会用诸如四分之一便士或几尼之类的单位进行“计算”，他们只是死记硬背各种硬币之间的关系，而对背后的微积分知之甚少。这一切都随着十进制化而改变，而十进制化在十九世纪与科学发现的巨大飞跃同步发展，所有这些发现都建立在归纳推理和经验数据的收集之上。一位收集数据的人……观察自然界各种关系的人是查尔斯·达尔文。他的发现将震撼世界。

Decimalization of money made more people numerate, and the more numerate the population, the more likely the population is to accept scientific breakthroughs backed by measurement. A similar process to what we observed with the introduction of zero was occurring but on a much broader scale. Everyone who had a coin in their pocket could more easily divide and multiply by ten and a hundred. It may be hard to understand today just how big a change this was in the way people thought. New parts of our brain were being used: predecimalization, the average person would have “calculated” in quantities such as farthings or guineas having learned by rote the relationships between the various coins without much understanding of the calculus behind it. That all changes with decimalization, which in the nineteenth century coevolves with great leaps in scientific discovery, all of which are grounded in inductive reasoning and the collection of empirical data. One man who was gathering data and observing all sorts of relationships in nature was Charles Darwin. His discovery would rock the world.

当达尔文遇到金钱

When Darwin met money

1848年夏天，查尔斯·达尔文正密切关注着马萨诸塞州波士顿码头爱尔兰移民中爆发的斑疹伤寒疫情。这场不断蔓延的人类悲剧使达尔文无暇顾及股市，当时他的损失正在不断扩大。铁路公司的股票，作为维多利亚时代变革性技术的象征，正成为人们疯狂投机的对象。达尔文的进化论，即他关于生命如何在地球上出现和发展的理论，以及其中自然选择的原则，本应提醒他，并非所有涉足铁路行业的公司都能成功。事实上，大多数在铁路热潮的狂热中仓促成立的公司都以惨败告终。到1848年中期，他对铁路股票的投资开始出现裂痕。就像之前的艾萨克·牛顿一样——牛顿在1720年的南海泡沫事件中，由于错误地将可预测的物理定律应用于纷繁复杂的金融世界而损失惨重——达尔文也遭遇了经济上的毁灭。他或许是一位改变我们世界观的天才，但谈到金钱，谈到金钱的运作方式以及金钱如何影响普通人的情绪时，达尔文也和普通人一样容易受骗。正如罗马人告诉我们的，金钱变幻莫测——你以为你能掌控它，但它却可能从你指缝间溜走。

In the summer of 1848, Charles Darwin was following news of a typhus outbreak among Irish immigrants at the docks in Boston, Massachusetts. The unfolding human tragedy took Darwin’s mind off the stock market, where his losses were ratcheting up. The stocks of railway companies, the transformative technology of the Victorian age, were the subject of wild speculation. Evolution, Darwin’s theory of how life had emerged and developed on earth, with its dictum of natural selection, should have warned him that not every company involved in the railway business would succeed. In fact, most companies set up hastily in the giddiness of the railway mania failed spectacularly. By mid-1848, his bet on railway stocks was unraveling. Like Isaac Newton before him—who lost his fortune in the 1720 South Sea Bubble by making the mistake of applying the predictable laws of physics to the messy world of money—Darwin was financially undone. He might have been a prodigy who changed our understanding of the world, but when it came to money, how it worked, and how the average person’s mood was affected by it, Darwin was as gullible as the next lad. As the Romans taught us, money is mercurial—you think you have a handle on it, but it can slip through your fingers.

达尔文对金钱的兴趣并非仅仅出于投机目的。十年前，正是经济学让他接触到了自然选择的概念，而一切都由此展开。^达尔文关于地球生命的理论被揭示出来他没有在生物学论文中提及他，而是在一本经济学著作中。他在日记中写道：

Darwin wasn’t only interested in money for the sake of speculation. A decade earlier, it was economics that had given him the concept of natural selection, and from there everything had flowed.³ Darwin’s theory of life on earth was revealed to him not in a biological treatise, but in an economics book. He wrote in his diary:

1838年10月，也就是我开始系统研究的十五个月后，我偶然读到马尔萨斯的《人口论》，当时我正处于消遣阶段。由于长期观察动植物的习性，我对万物皆有生存斗争的认识已相当透彻，因此我立刻想到，在这种情况下，有利的变异会倾向于保留下来，而不利的变异则会被淘汰。其结果就是新物种的诞生。至此，我终于找到了一个可以着手研究的理论。

In October 1838, that is fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for my amusement “Malthus on Population,” and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of plants and animals, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the creation of a new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work.

经济学家兼英国圣公会牧师托马斯·马尔萨斯所著的《人口论及其对社会未来发展的影响》一书，全名为《论人口原理》。1838年，达尔文迫切地想要找到一种理论来解释他对自然界的观察。在他著名的航行中，他详细记录了哪些动植物繁衍生息，哪些已经灭绝。在加拉帕戈斯群岛，他注意到一些在其他地方已经灭绝的动物在那里繁衍生息。他研究了花草植物，以及它们如何为了争夺光照和养分而相互竞争。他研究了那些幸存下来的植物是如何适应环境的，并将这种持续不断的斗争称为“物种之战”。达尔文得出结论：有些植物在环境变化中挣扎求生，而另一些植物则蓬勃发展，同样的原理也可能适用于人类。他掌握了数据，却缺乏理论框架——直到他读到了马尔萨斯的著作。在消化了《人口原理》之后，达尔文有了自己的理论，并在整个19世纪40年代将他的数据应用于他关于地球生命存在的新论点。这在很大程度上是基于马尔萨斯关于“正向制约”的关键见解，达尔文称之为“自然选择”。

The full title of the book, by the economist and Anglican minister Thomas Malthus, is An Essay on the Principle of Population, as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society. In 1838, Darwin was desperately in search of a theory to explain his observations of the natural world. During his famous voyages, he took copious notes about which animals and plants had thrived and which had become extinct. In the Galápagos Islands, he noticed some animals thriving that were extinct elsewhere. He examined flowers and plants and how they fought with each other for light and nutrients. He studied how the ones that survived seemed to adapt to their environment and he called this constant struggle the “warring of the species.” Darwin concluded that some plants struggle in a changed environment while others thrive, and that the same principle might apply to humans. He had data but no framework—until he read Malthus. Once he digested An Essay on the Principle of Population, Darwin had his theory and he spent the 1840s applying his data to his new life-on-earth thesis, one that was largely based on the key Malthusian insight of “positive checks,” which Darwin called “natural selection.”

马尔萨斯认为，随着工业的扩张，工业收入变得更加稳定，人们生育的子女也更多。在他看来，由工业繁荣驱动的人口激增，必然会冲击土地的粮食供应能力。世界将陷入所谓的“马尔萨斯陷阱”。在此之前，农民通常会只种植一种或几种作物，以满足不断增长的人口的粮食需求，这意味着越来越多的人将越来越依赖于少数几种作物，从而加剧生存的脆弱性。（19世纪40年代遭受饥荒的爱尔兰就经历了这种情况。）马尔萨斯认为，人口增长必然会引发各种匮乏，无论是粮食短缺、作物歉收还是传染病，因为不断增长的人口会给地球的自然资源带来压力。适应能力较弱的人口将会被淘汰，最终导致灾难性的人口崩溃。

Malthus suggested that as industry expanded, incomes from industry became more secure, and people had more children. For Malthus, the population boom, driven by the industrial boom, would inevitably slam against the ability of the land to provide enough food. The world would be caught in what became known as a “Malthusian trap.” Before that moment, farmers would default to one crop or a narrow set of crops that might provide a staple for an increasing population, meaning more people would become more and more dependent on fewer crops, increasing the fragility of existence. (This is what would happen in famine-afflicted Ireland in the 1840s.) For Malthus, increased populations would inevitably succumb to privation, whether it be food shortages, crop failure, or contagious disease, as rising populations put pressure on the earth’s natural resources. Less adaptable populations would succumb, leading to catastrophic population collapse.

对达尔文而言，马尔萨斯最重要的论述是，当土地资源有限时，人们会调整自身行为以维持不断增长的人口。这就是所谓的“正向制约”。达尔文立刻意识到这些行为适应与他自己的地球生命理论息息相关。那些运用正向制约、适应环境的物种能够生存下来；而那些不适应的物种则会灭绝。例如，爱尔兰大饥荒之后，结婚率骤降，移民潮持续蔓延，目睹邻居挨饿的创伤改变了后代的行为。随着马尔萨斯式的正向制约发挥作用，爱尔兰岛的人口从1841年的800万锐减至1941年的不足400万。调整自身行为是生存的关键。19世纪50年代，约有99万爱尔兰人移民到美国——占那十年间所有美国移民的83%。我的祖先适应了环境。与其说是适者生存，不如说是适应性最强者生存。正如他在1848年观察到的那些饱受创伤的爱尔兰难民一样，他们的经历为达尔文和马尔萨斯的理论提供了进一步的证据，也证明了这些经济学观察如何应用于生物学。

Most important for Darwin, Malthus wrote that people would adapt their behavior when faced with the limits of the land to sustain ever-growing populations. These were the so-called positive checks. Darwin immediately saw the relevance of these behavioral adaptations for his own theory of life on earth. The species that deployed positive checks, adapting to their environment, would survive; those that didn’t adapt would die out. For example, after the Irish Famine, marriage rates plummeted, emigration continued, and the trauma of seeing their neighbors starve changed the behavior of coming generations. The population on the island of Ireland fell from 8 million in 1841 to less than 4 million by 1941, as the Malthusian positive checks kicked in. Adapting their behavior was the key to survival. In the 1850s, about 990,000 Irish people emigrated to the United States—83 percent of all migrants to the US in that decade. My ancestors adapted. It wasn’t so much survival of the fittest as survival of the most adaptive. As he observed the traumatized Irish refugees in 1848, their experience would have provided further evidence for Darwin of Malthus’s theories and how these economic observations could apply to biology.

适应性世界

The adaptive world

达尔文得出结论，积极的制约机制在社会学上等同于自然界的自然选择过程。从某种意义上说，马尔萨斯是第一位进化经济学家，他认为某种形式的自然选择支配着人类与地球之间的关系，而且这种关系并非一成不变。他的思想并不局限于食物供应。马尔萨斯认为，大城市会遭受更高的瘟疫和流行病侵袭，大量人口因此丧命，以此来控制人口增长；与此同时，人类的行为也会随之调整，通过保持社交距离、隔离等措施来避免人群聚集。然而，马尔萨斯没有预料到的是，人类的智慧将使我们的积极制约机制带来卫生和公共卫生方面的惊人改善，以及科技进步带来的农业产量提升，随着人口的激增，马尔萨斯陷阱理论显得古老而过时。马尔萨斯低估了人类，但如今的气候变化危机表明，自然仍然主导着人类的生存法则。世界仍处于不断演化的动荡之中。

Darwin concluded that positive checks were the sociological equivalent of nature’s natural selection process. In a sense, Malthus was the first evolutionary economist, arguing that a form of natural selection governed the relationship between people and the planet, and that this relationship was never static. His ideas were not limited to food supply. Malthus suggested that great towns would see a much higher incidence of plagues and epidemics wiping out large numbers to keep a lid on the population and, at the same time, human behavior would adapt, using social distancing, quarantine, and other behaviors to keep people apart. What Malthus did not foresee was that human ingenuity would mean that our positive checks would involve breathtaking improvements in sanitation and public health, as well as scientific and technological advances that boosted agricultural output and made his Malthusian trap idea seem quaint and outdated as the population surged. Malthus underestimated humankind, but today’s climate change crisis shows us that nature continues to set the terms of engagement. The world remains in a state of evolutionary churn.

随着英国和美国经济的扩张，经济学这门科学也开始发展壮大。经济学的普及。自十八世纪末亚当·斯密以来，知识分子开始将经济学视为一个独立的研究课题。在工业革命之前，经济的概念还很抽象，但随着实证社会的出现、工业化、工资和利润的产生，知识分子和科学家开始探索“经济”这一概念，将其视为一个由错综复杂、影响深远的相互关系构成的系统。人们开始探究经济的运作机制、创新的源泉以及货币在这一系统中扮演的角色。

As the economy in Britain and America started to expand, the science that would become economics began to grow in popularity. Beginning with Adam Smith in the late eighteenth century, intellectuals started to consider the economy as a subject in itself. Up until the industrial revolution, the notion of the economy was an abstract idea, but with the advent of the empirical society, industrialization, wages, and profits, intellectuals and scientists started to explore the concept of “the economy,” a system consisting of a complex web of profoundly consequential relationships. People began to ask how the economy works, where innovation comes from, and what role money plays within this system.

维多利亚时代的经济学为维多利亚时代的生物学带来了最伟大的突破：自然选择理论。进化论对维多利亚时代人们的思维方式产生了深远的影响，这一点怎么强调都不为过。他们此前对自身在世界中的位置，包括人类起源的一切认知，都被彻底颠覆了。进化论动摇了社会等级制度和宗教信仰：如果自然界是进化的，那么社会又怎能停滞不前呢？曾经笃信不疑的事物如今却充满了怀疑，这引发了社会的不满。这种不安反映在维多利亚时代的艺术和文学作品中，人们试图适应这种全新的世界观。科学威胁着迷信；教条和既定的智慧都受到了质疑。传统受到现代性的冲击，从而催生了科学探索和技术创新的蓬勃发展。细菌理论直接源于达尔文引发的生物学研究热潮，并从根本上改变了医学领域。麻醉剂、X射线和显微镜技术的发展，与电灯泡和电话的发明相辅相成。这些发明需要资金，而人们对科学的热情带来了巨额投资。

Victorian economics gave Victorian biology its greatest breakthrough: the theory of natural selection. It is difficult to overstate how the theory of evolution affected the way Victorians thought. Everything they had believed up to then about their place in the world, including how we got here, was upended. Evolution undermined social hierarchy as well as religion: If nature evolved, how could you have a society that stood still? The creation of so much doubt, where there had been certainty, generated dissent. This disquiet is reflected in the art and literature of the Victorian age, as people tried to come to terms with new ways of looking at the world. Science threatened superstition; dogma and received wisdom were questioned. Tradition was assailed by the modern, leading to an explosion in scientific inquiry and technological innovation. Germ theory, stemming directly from a growth of interest in biology sparked by Darwin, would fundamentally change the field of medicine. The development of anesthetics, X-rays, and microscope technology was accompanied by the invention of the light bulb and the telephone. These inventions needed money, and an enthusiasm for science released enormous investment.

经济学为达尔文提供了理论框架，反过来，达尔文的理论框架也由此而来。模板提供了一种理解经济运行方式的方法。正如被许多人视为现代经济学之父的阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔所指出的，“经济学家的圣地在于经济生物学”，^⁴这意味着经济的特征与自然界中类似的、具有波动性的演化力量，因为它也是一个复杂且相互关联的系统。而经济波动性的根源在于其核心——人类这个奇妙而又难以预测的群体。印度的政治事件便可证明这种复杂性，并凸显出预测不断变化的经济走向是多么困难。

Economics gave Darwin his template and, in turn, Darwin’s template offered a way of understanding how the economy worked. As Alfred Marshall, regarded by many as the father of modern economics, noted, “the Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology,”⁴ meaning that the economy is characterized by similarly volatile evolutionary forces to those found in nature, because it too is a complex and interrelated system. And the source of the volatility in economics is the wonderfully unpredictable animal at its center, the human being. A political event in India would evidence this complexity, underscoring just how difficult it is to predict the path of the ever-adapting economy.

眼镜蛇效应

The cobra effect

当达尔文埋头苦读《物种起源》的最后校对工作时，来自殖民地的又一则令人震惊的消息震动了威斯敏斯特。这一次，不是爱尔兰，而是印度。1857年，英国占领下的印度爆发了叛乱。英国教科书至今仍将这场起义称为“兵变”，仿佛印度人争取自由的行为是对英国的不忠。面对席卷全国的叛乱，英国人担心失去这片殖民地。印度已沦为掠夺者的天堂，其价值之高，令人难以割舍。英国人抵达时，印度的GDP接近全球总收入的30%，但到他们离开时，印度的GDP已降至全球总收入的不到3%。

As Darwin was beavering away on the final proofs of On the Origin of Species, more shocking news from the colonies rattled Westminster. This time, it wasn’t Ireland but India. In 1857, British-occupied India rebelled. British textbooks still refer to the uprising as a “mutiny,” as if Indians agitating for freedom was a display of disloyalty. Facing widespread insurrection, the British feared losing the colony. India had become a looter’s paradise, far too valuable to abandon. When the British arrived, Indian GDP was close to 30 percent of the world’s total global income, but by the time they left, India’s GDP was reduced to less than 3 percent of world income.

1857年起义后，英国改变策略，开始贿赂印度民众，让他们相信占领对他们有利。英国一边继续掠夺和洗劫，一边推行“以德报怨”的官方政策。这意味着开展一些看似无害的公共工程项目，例如用印度税收修建铁路，建造一些图书馆等等。第二，他们还计划建造一座全新的贸易城市——国际化大都会孟买，以便将印度内陆的财富集中起来。每一项微不足道的努力都被标榜为开明外国统治的典范，或者正如他们自己所说，是将文明“带给”一个比英国建国早4000年的文明。

After the 1857 rebellion, Britain changed tack and set out to bribe enough people in India into believing that occupation was good for them. Britain continued looting and plundering while carrying out the official policy of “killing home rule with kindness.” This meant benign public works projects, like building train tracks with Indian taxes, putting up the odd library or two, and building an entirely new trading city, the cosmopolitan entrepot of Bombay, out of which the wealth of the Indian interior could be funneled. Each meager effort was held up as an example of enlightened foreign rule or, as they said themselves, “bringing civilization” to a civilization that predated the British state by 4,000 years.

英国人认为，在管理庞大的德里城时，他们或许能赢得一些宣传上的好感。1857年叛乱几年后，机会来了。英国高级专员公署收到报告，称老德里迷宫般的街道里出现了眼镜蛇出没。被眼镜蛇咬伤后，人只有30分钟的窒息时间。不出所料，全城陷入恐慌。英国人抓住这个机会，向印度人展示他们是多么幸运，能被伦敦这个高效的地方统治。英国人要把蛇赶出德里。

The British thought they might win a few propaganda brownie points in the administration of the sprawling city of Delhi. A few years after the 1857 rebellion, an opportunity presented itself. The British High Commission received reports of a cobra infestation in the warren of Old Delhi. Thirty minutes is all a person has before a cobra bite will cause asphyxia. Not surprisingly, the city was panicking. Here was the chance for the British to display to Indians how lucky they were to be ruled from competent London. The British would chase the snakes out of Delhi.

回到白厅后，印度事务部开始考虑如何争取当地居民参与消灭致命眼镜蛇的行动。他们提出，在老城区指定地点发现死眼镜蛇者可获得丰厚的赏金。当地居民在金钱的激励下，会积极控制蛇患，很快德里就能彻底摆脱眼镜蛇的困扰。

Back in Whitehall, the India Office considered how to co-opt the local population in the drive to eliminate the deadly cobras. They offered a financial reward on the production of a dead cobra at a specific point in the old city. The locals, spurred by money, would take control of the snake menace and in no time Delhi would be cobra-free.

起初，德里那些胆大的耍蛇人开始行动。大量的死眼镜蛇开始出现在投放点——眼镜蛇的数量正在锐减。当地人领取了赏金。英国人也为此沾沾自喜。但几个月后，消息传回伦敦，眼镜蛇的处境似乎并不乐观。送来的死眼镜蛇数量越来越多。这究竟是怎么回事？事与愿违的后果再次显现。英国人通过悬赏捕杀眼镜蛇，将其从一种剧毒的威胁变成了有价值的商品，进而变成了一笔可观的收入来源。金钱至上。老德里的企业家们并没有选择猎杀野生眼镜蛇，而是开始人工养殖！家养眼镜蛇比野生眼镜蛇更容易猎杀，一条为精明的当地人带来利润的生产线就此形成。

At first, Delhi’s intrepid snake charmers got to work. Lots of dead cobras started turning up at the drop-off points—the cobra population was being decimated. The locals collected their rewards. The British were chuffed. But within a few months, reports filtered back to London that all was not well on the cobra front. The number of dead cobras being delivered was increasing. What was going on? The law of unintended consequences had kicked in. By putting a price on the cobra’s head, the British had turned it from a venomous menace into a valuable commodity and, by extension, into a stream of income. Money talks. The entrepreneurs of Old Delhi reacted not by killing wild cobras, but by breeding them! The domesticated cobra was easier to kill than its wild cousin and a production line of profit for enterprising locals was developed.

白厅的一笔行政命令，竟将原本的威胁变成了蓬勃发展的生意。英国人百思不得其解。街上的野生眼镜蛇数量减少了，但政府却源源不断地拨款购买大量死眼镜蛇。最终，他们恍然大悟，突击搜查了这些新兴的眼镜蛇养殖场。英国人恼羞成怒，终止了赏金计划。印度商人见眼镜蛇价格暴跌，立即将蛇投放到城里。既然它们一文不值，又何必留着呢？结果，眼镜蛇再次泛滥成灾，比赏金计划实施前更加猖獗。

At the stroke of a Whitehall pen, the menace was turned into a vibrant business. The British were perplexed. There were fewer wild cobras on the streets, but money was flying out of government coffers to pay for a surge in dead cobras. Eventually they twigged what was going on and raided the burgeoning businesses, these new cobra farms. Incensed at having been duped, the British ended the reward scheme. The Indian entrepreneurs promptly reacted to the collapse in the value of cobras by releasing their stock into the city. Why keep them if they were worthless? The city became infested with cobras again, worse than before the scheme.

货币与演化经济

Money and the evolutionary economy

眼镜蛇的故事揭示了金钱如何推动经济，而经济的运作就像一个庞大而难以预测的进化有机体。在经济中，产品来来去去；有时伟大的创意无人问津，而平庸的创意却能流行起来。没有人真正知道其中的原因。随着经济中资金的不断涌入，越来越多的创意被转化为产品和服务。每个产品都满怀信心地诞生，但最终只有少数能够存活下来。你是否曾参加过充满疑虑或缺乏自信的产品发布会？每一个新设计都曾被认为会改变世界，直到最终未能如愿。精心策划的营销方案也很少能在市场冲击下幸存。就像我们故事中那些迷人的德里眼镜蛇一样，市场变幻莫测。

The cobra tale reveals that money nudges the economy, which works like a giant and unpredictable evolutionary organism. In the economy, products come and go; sometimes great ideas don’t catch on while lesser ones do. No one really knows why. With more and more money in the economy, more ideas are turned into products and services. Each begins life with confidence, yet only a few will survive. Have you ever been at a doubting or self-conscious product launch? Every new design is going to change the world, until it doesn’t. The best-laid marketing plans rarely survive their impact with the market. Like our Delhi cobra charmers, the market is unpredictable.

基因进化是渐进的，而由金钱驱动和调节的经济进化则速度惊人。金钱越多，产品越多，能量就越充沛，进化过程也就越快。正如自然界中多样化的生态系统才是健康的生态系统一样，经济越多元化——互动、人口、网络和资本越多——就能产生越多的创意、产品和服务。健康的经济充满活力；越是蓬勃发展越好。随着经济的演变，它会经历各种冲击，而最多元化的地区之所以能够成功，是因为它不会过度依赖任何单一因素。

Where genetic evolution is gradual, economic evolution, mediated and propelled by money, is incredibly fast. The more money, the more products, the more energy, and the quicker the evolutionary process. As in the natural world where a diverse ecosystem is a healthy one, the more diverse an economy—the more interactions, people, networks, and capital—the more ideas, products, and services are produced. A healthy economy is vibrant; the more exuberant the better. As the economy evolves, rolling with various punches, the most diverse region succeeds because it doesn’t become overdependent on any single thing.

自然界的单一作物种植模式极其脆弱。想想达尔文对我的爱尔兰祖先的思考，他们只依赖一种作物——马铃薯。进化经济学中的单一作物种植模式与动物界的情况如出一辙，都是通往贫困的道路。除了石油国家之外，经济多样性才是通往财富的道路。多样性提供了更多的选择、组合和商业交叉融合的新可能性。例如，当古腾堡在15世纪繁荣的美因茨生态系统中发明印刷机时，商业多样性对他来说至关重要。他将自己作为金匠的艺术背景所积累的印刷技术知识，与美因茨沿用几个世纪的葡萄酒压榨技术相结合。这种能力的结合是创新的关键。

Monoculture in the natural world is highly fragile. Think about Darwin’s musing on my Irish ancestors, who were dependent on one crop, the potato. Monoculture in evolutionary economics works the same way as it does in the animal world. It’s the road to poverty. With the exception of petrostates, economic diversity is the road to riches. Diversity offers more options, combinations, and novel possibilities for commercial cross-pollination. For example, when Gutenberg invented the printing press in the thriving ecosystem of fifteenth-century Mainz, commercial diversity was his friend. He combined his know-how in print technology, stemming from his artistic background as a goldsmith, with the wine-pressing technology used in Mainz for centuries. Combining these capabilities was the key to the innovation.

新产品通常由相邻或唾手可得的资源组合而成。企业家就是将这些资源整合起来的人，而他们为此投入资金。资金越多，风险越大，产品种类越丰富，经济发展速度也越快。新产品取代旧产品，没有人能够预知新产品会催生出什么新产品。就像眼镜蛇的例子一样，一项预期会带来某种结果的举措，最终却可能产生截然不同甚至自相矛盾的结果。我们无法准确预测由此产生的连锁反应。一项创新带来的影响。5印刷术一经问世，便给生活的许多领域带来了意想不到的巨大变革，从教育和工业到金融和宗教，最终导致了宗教改革^。

New products are usually fashioned out of things that are adjacent or close at hand. The entrepreneur is the person who puts these things together, and they do this with money. The more money, the more risk, the more diversity, and the quicker the economy evolves. New products replace old ones, and no one has any idea what will be spawned by what. Like the cobra example, one initiative which is expected to lead to one outcome can lead to something quite different and often contradictory. We cannot forecast with any accuracy the ripple effects of an innovation.⁵ Once launched, the printing press spawned vast unexpected changes in many areas of life, from education and industry to finance and religion, leading ultimately to the Reformation.

达尔文时代的全球经济充满活力，各种思想、发现和新产品层出不穷。与其说是增长——仅仅是规模扩大——不如说是进化。能够生存下来的产品都是那些适应环境的产品。并没有什么伟大的创造者为某种产品加冕：经济本身就是一个没有设计者的设计。达尔文卷入的铁路股票投机狂潮只是这一时期众多投机事件中的一个。石油和电力的发现引发了人们对哪种资源将在伟大的进化之战中胜出的狂热赌局。

The world economy in Darwin’s time was buzzing with ideas, discoveries, and new products. It wasn’t so much growing—simply getting bigger—as evolving. The products that survived were those that adapted. There was no grand creator anointing one product or another: the economy was a design without a designer. The frenzy of speculation in railway shares that ensnared Darwin was only one of many during this period. The discoveries of oil and electricity sparked enthusiastic gambling on which resource would be the winner in the great evolutionary battle.

金钱既是这个新世界的燃料，也是它的仲裁者。如果一个产品或一家公司能赚钱，它就能生存下去；反之，则会消亡。实际上，金钱作为利润，是演化经济学向世界宣告新产品是否成功的途径。尽管20世纪政治经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼特尚未对此做出明确定义，但19世纪伟大的经济腾飞是由“创造性破坏的狂风”，或者凯恩斯所说的“动物精神”所驱动的。经济并非静止不变、机械运转或可建模的，它是鲜​​活的，并且不断演进。

Money was both the fuel and the arbiter of this new world. If a product or company was making money, it survived. If not, it became extinct. In effect, money as profit is the evolutionary economy’s way of telling the world whether a new product is a winner or not. Although not yet defined in the words of twentieth-century political economist Joseph Schumpeter, the great nineteenth-century economic takeoff was driven by “gales of creative destruction,” or what Keynes termed “animal spirits.” The economy isn’t static, or mechanical, or modelable. It’s alive and it evolves.

不断壮大的中产阶级

A growing middle class

到十九世纪中叶，金钱使世界变得更小。新的消费品增加了对原材料的需求，这些原材料运抵欧洲和美国的港口，被送往新建的工厂进行生产。琳琅满目的商品令人叹为观止。这些工厂的工资和利润为工人创造了收入，同时工厂也需要文员、律师、会计和经理——这些人构成了新兴的中产阶级，后来被称为白领工人。银行的设立是为了吸收这个阶层的储蓄，而银行需要从这些储蓄中获利。它们向企业家放贷，从而催生了一个不断寻找下一个投资热点的商业投资者阶层。这一时期信贷和金融创新蓬勃发展，最终演变成我们今天所说的银行业，其业务遍及全球，哪里有资金需求，哪里就有银行。在创新的驱动下，这个充满活力的银行体系将资金和信贷输送到实业家手中，并最终流入对产品有着永无止境需求的资产阶级手中。

By the mid-nineteenth century, money was making the world smaller. New consumer products increased the demand for raw materials, which landed at the ports of Europe and America to be deployed in new factories that were producing an astonishing array of goods. Wages and profits from these factories generated income for workers, while the factories required clerks, lawyers, accountants, and managers—those who made up the new middle classes, and would later become known as white-collar workers. Banks, set up to take in the savings of this class, needed to earn money on these savings. They lent to entrepreneurs, creating a commercial class of investors who were constantly looking for the next big thing. The period saw an explosion in credit and financial innovation, leading to the evolution of what we would now call the banking industry, whose reach extended all around the globe, wherever there was a demand for money. Driven by innovation, this vibrant banking system funneled money and credit into the hands of industrialists and, ultimately, the bourgeoisie with their insatiable demand for products.

自行车就是这样一种产品，这项发明具有如此巨大的变革意义，其影响遍及全球。而非洲受到的影响尤为显著，也更令人痛心。

One such product was the bicycle, an invention so transformative that its impact would be felt all over the world. Nowhere more so—and more tragically—than in Africa.

黑暗之心

Heart of darkness

“你是刺客吗，威拉德？”

“Are you an assassin, Willard?”

“我是一名士兵。”

“I’m a soldier.”

“你两者都不是；你只是个杂货店小弟，被店员派来收账的。”

“You’re neither; you’re a grocery boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill.”

要说最狠的嘲讽，库尔兹上校（马龙·白兰度饰）对威拉德上尉（马丁·辛饰）的这番话可谓一针见血。光头库尔兹一边往头上抹肥皂，一边恐吓年轻的威拉德，这一幕本身就足以让他赢得奥斯卡奖。弗朗西斯·福特·科波拉执导的《现代启示录》是全球影迷耳熟能详的经典之作，故事背景设定在越南战争期间。年轻的刺客威拉德沿着湄公河逆流而上，寻找藏身于丛林堡垒中的库尔兹。堡垒的围墙由插在尖刺上的断头组成，令人毛骨悚然。科波拉的故事取材于一位波兰作家对比利时刚果真实事件的记述。这位作家名叫约瑟夫·特奥多尔·康拉德·科热尼奥夫斯基，更为人熟知的名字是……约瑟夫·康拉德的世界。他于 1899 年出版的中篇小说《黑暗之心》向文学界揭露了比利时国王利奥波德二世所谓的自由贸易区的真相，该贸易区横跨中非广袤的刚果河（也是伊尚戈骨的发现地）。

As put-downs go, this one from the rogue Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) to Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is devastating. The scene with a bald Kurtz lathering his head while psyching out young Willard should have been enough on its own to win an Oscar. Familiar to cinema lovers worldwide, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, set during the Vietnam War, sees the young assassin Willard venture up the Mekong River in search of Kurtz, who is holed up in his jungle fortress behind a macabre fence made up of severed heads impaled on spikes. Coppola’s storyline is borrowed from a Polish writer’s account of real-life events in the Belgian Congo. That writer is Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, better known to the world as Joseph Conrad. His 1899 novella Heart of Darkness revealed to a literary audience the true nature of King Leopold of Belgium’s so-called free trade zone, which straddled the vast Congo River in Central Africa (the same trading route where the Ishango Bone was unearthed).

1890年，这位32岁的波兰作家在一艘向刚果运送铁路枕木的船上工作。罗杰·凯斯门特是一位经验丰富的非洲老兵，曾担任铁路测量员、地图绘制员和劳工招募员，他悉心指导这位年轻的作家。凯斯门特夜复一夜地向康拉德讲述刚果河上游地区大规模的人权侵犯事件。在凯斯门特和康拉德相遇的两年前，也就是1888年，凯斯门特曾遇到一位名叫纪尧姆·范·克尔克霍芬的残暴比利时军官，他将砍下的头颅插在木桩上装饰自己的营房——这与康拉德小说中库尔茨先生和科波拉电影中同名人物的手段如出一辙。凯斯门特后来写了一份关于范·克尔克霍芬的报告，这份报告在伦敦被礼貌地接收并存档。在权贵阶层，批评刚果并不受欢迎，因为这牵涉到巨额利益。

In 1890, the 32-year-old Pole was working aboard a ship delivering railway sleepers to the Congo. Roger Casement, an Africa veteran who had worked as a surveyor of railways, mapmaker, and labor recruiter, took the young writer under his wing. Night after night, Casement informed Conrad of the industrial-scale human rights abuses that were being meted out further up the Congo River. Two years before Casement and Conrad met, in 1888, Casement had encountered a sadistic Belgian officer named Guillaume Van Kerckhoven who adorned his barracks with severed heads on stakes, precisely the tactic used by Mr. Kurtz in Conrad’s novella and his namesake in Coppola’s film. Casement would later write a report about Van Kerckhoven that was politely received and filed away in London. Criticism of the Congo wasn’t too welcome in powerful circles because too much money was being made.

如果他没有经历一段非凡的人生——而直到四十岁，几乎没有任何迹象表明他会如此——都柏林人罗杰·凯斯门特很可能就会葬在我家附近的墓园里，离我祖父母的墓地很近。他的兄弟也葬在那里，而命运弄人，他离发明充气橡胶轮胎的约翰·博伊德·邓禄普的墓地也只有几块墓穴之隔。邓禄普的发明改变了全球经济，对于金钱、橡胶和刚果的故事至关重要。如果没有邓禄普的发明，凯斯门特恐怕根本就不会来到刚果。

Had he not lived an extraordinary life—and up to the age of forty there was little to suggest he would—Dubliner Roger Casement would likely have been buried in my local cemetery, close to where my grandparents lie. His brother is buried there and, by a strange twist of fate, he lies only a few plots from the resting place of John Boyd Dunlop, the man who invented the pneumatic rubber tire. Dunlop’s invention transformed the global economy and is critical to the story of money, rubber, and the Congo. Had it not been for Dunlop’s invention, it’s unlikely that Casement would have ended up in the Congo in the first place.

大约在1887年，唐郡唐帕特里克一位颇具进取心的当地兽医邓洛普弯下腰，倾听他五岁儿子的诉说。儿子抱怨说，自行车在颠簸的鹅卵石路上骑起来很不舒服。邓禄普想出了一个绝妙的主意：给橡胶轮胎充气，然后把它们套在车轮上，这样就能减轻骑行的颠簸感。

Around 1887, Dunlop, an enterprising local vet in Downpatrick, County Down, had stooped to listen to his five-year-old son complaining that his bike was uncomfortable to ride over the bumpy cobbled streets. Dunlop came up with the bright idea of pumping air into rubber tires and fitting them around the wheels to soften the ride.

橡胶于1526年传入欧洲。当时，西班牙征服者将一种奇特的材料连同一些被俘的土著居民一起带回了加的斯。西班牙教会中一个规模虽小但声音响亮的反奴隶制团体，希望向加的斯宫廷展示这些“印第安人”的智慧和文明，便邀请他们玩一种名为“ ullamaliztli ”的游戏，这是足球的前身。比赛规则是，双方队员只能用臀部、胸部和大腿将球踢过球场两端的圆环。真正吸引西班牙人的并非球员们的灵巧身手，而是球本身。这种球由一种前所未见的物质制成，其运动轨迹如此奇特，以至于西班牙语中甚至没有一个词可以形容它的弹跳。欧洲人^百思不得其解，这种物质为何投掷起来很重，弹跳起来却像羽毛一样轻盈。这种物质采自亚马逊丛林中的树木，具有极强的可弯曲性和延展性。直到十九世纪初，欧洲化学家才发现橡胶加热后会拉伸（并可制成靴子，靴子迅速风靡一时），但早在亚马逊地区，人们就已适应并利用橡胶数个世纪之久。亚马逊之后，世界上气候与之相似的地区仅剩一个——西非刚果河周围的生态系统。

Rubber had been introduced to Europe in 1526 when Spanish conquerors brought a strange material back to Cádiz along with some captured indigenous people. A small but vocal antislavery section within the Spanish Church, hoping to reveal to the court in Cádiz the intelligence and sophistication of these “Indians,” invited them to play their own game, ullamaliztli, a forerunner of football. The teams had to get a ball through a hoop at either end of a pitch using only their hips, chest, and thighs. What captivated the Spaniards was not so much the physical dexterity of the players as the ball itself. Made of a never-before-seen substance, its motion was so strange that the Spanish language didn’t even have a word to describe its bounce.¹ Europeans couldn’t figure out how a substance could be heavy to throw and yet bounce light as a feather at the same time. The substance, harvested from trees in the Amazonian jungle, could bend and stretch. It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that European chemists figured out that rubber stretched when heated (and could be molded into boots which became an instant hit), but back in the Amazon, people had been adapting and utilizing rubber for centuries. After the Amazon, there was only one other climatically similar region in the world—the ecosystem surrounding the great Congo River in West Africa.

邓禄普因橡胶轮胎而闻名，他将充气轮胎专利卖给了后来以他名字命名的全球跨国公司——邓禄普工业公司。充气轮胎改变了世界。车轮滚动更顺畅，骑行也更加轻松舒适。19世纪80年代的自行车热潮在19世纪90年代演变为全球性的自行车热潮。邓禄普重新发明了车轮。他的发明不仅会改写非洲历史，还会改写全球金融和经济格局。

Dunlop made his name in rubber tires, selling his pneumatic tire patent to the global multinational that subsequently bore his name, Dunlop Industries. Pneumatic tires changed the world. Wheels rolled more smoothly and made the bike far gentler to cycle. The 1880s fad for bicycles turned into a global boom by the 1890s. Dunlop had reinvented the wheel. His invention would also rewrite not just African history but global financial and economic flows.

在许多方面，植物学长期以来一直是帝国主义的主要工具之一。植物最初作为茶叶、糖和咖啡等消费品，在十七、十八世纪的商业时代推动了全球贸易，使欧洲商人获利颇丰。到了十九世纪，尽管消费者的喜好对商业仍然至关重要，但植物的药用和工业价值已成为全球化的驱动力。植物学家通常被描绘成和蔼无畏的科学家，但实际上他们往往是帝国主义的代理人，而看似无害的植物园则成了殖民主义的研究实验室。工业革命期间的热化学进步进一步改变了植物学在经济体系中的地位：例如，硫化——一种将硫添加到乳胶中使橡胶硬化的工艺——对橡胶在全球经济中的作用产生了巨大影响，例如橡胶被用作电线的绝缘和防水管材。橡胶和橡胶种植区成为世界工业生产的关键，到 19 世纪末，生橡胶成为各种新型工业和消费品的重要投入，将西方消费者、工人、制造商和金融家卷入了一场庞大的殖民计划。

In many ways, botany had long been one of the chief instruments of empire. Plants, first as consumer goods such as tea, sugar, and coffee, drove much global trade during the commercial age of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enriching European merchants. By the nineteenth century, while consumer tastes were still important for commerce, the medicinal and industrial properties of plants now fueled globalization. The botanist, regularly painted as a benign, intrepid scientist, was more often than not an agent of imperialism, while seemingly harmless botanical gardens were the research labs of colonialism. Thermochemical advances during the industrial revolution further transformed the place of botany in the economic system: for example, vulcanization—a process whereby sulfur is added to latex to harden rubber—had dramatic consequences for the role rubber played in the global economy, as in its use as insulating and waterproof tubing for electrical wires. Rubber and rubber-growing areas became pivotal to worldwide industrial production, and by the late nineteenth century raw rubber became a crucial input into a whole host of new industrial and consumer goods, enmeshing Western consumers, workers, manufacturers, and financiers in a vast colonial project.

循环狂热

Cycle mania

在邓禄普发明自行车后的几年里，欧美中产阶级热情地拥抱了自行车。自行车比马匹便宜，而且对于当时只连接部分城镇乡村的火车来说，自行车是一种自由自在的出行选择。有了自行车，你想去哪儿就去哪儿。在英国，教区记录显示，19世纪90年代自行车热潮期间，村际通婚的数量显著增加。原本可能素不相识的人们因为自行车而走到了一起，扩大了基因库。

In the years following Dunlop’s invention, the middle classes of Europe and America took to cycling with gusto. Less expensive than horses, bicycles were a freewheeling alternative to the trains that only connected certain towns and villages. With the bike, you could go where you wanted. In England, parish records show a significant increase in intervillage marriages coincident with the cycle mania of the 1890s. People who might otherwise not have met each other hooked up thanks to the bike, expanding the gene pool.

1897年5月21日，剑桥大学参议院正在投票表决是否赋予女学生获得完整学位的权利。一群愤怒的男学生挥舞着写有“大学是男生的天下”的标语，撕毁了一个骑自行车的女性人偶。他们将人偶拆得七零八落，扯下她的头，然后连同她的自行车一起，把残骸张贴在了全女子学院纽纳姆学院的大门外。骑自行车的女性象征着这项发明所代表的一切丑闻。在传统主义者看来，自行车是一种具有颠覆性的机器，是女性宣示独立的工具。

In Cambridge, on May 21, 1897, when the university senate was voting on whether to grant female students the right to receive a full degree, a group of angry male students brandishing signs reading “Varsity for males” tore into an effigy of a woman on a bicycle. They ripped the mannequin apart, tore off her head, and posted her remains—with her bicycle—through the gates of the all-female Newnham College. The woman on the bicycle represented everything that was scandalous about this invention. For traditionalists, the bike was a transgressive machine, a mechanism for women to assert their independence.

1896年，16岁的克里斯特贝尔·潘克赫斯特（Christabel Pankhurst）——妇女参政运动领袖艾米琳·潘克赫斯特（Emmeline Pankhurst）的女儿——恳求父亲给她买一辆自行车。她和妹妹西尔维娅（Sylvia）加入了曼彻斯特的克拉里昂自行车俱乐部（Clarion Cycle Club），该俱乐部是社会主义报纸《克拉里昂报》（The Clarion）的分支机构。到1900年，英国已有70个克拉里昂自行车俱乐部，全部接纳女性会员。这些女性利用俱乐部骑行穿梭于城镇乡村，将妇女参政运动的理念传播到全国各地。保守的统治阶级对女性进行着各种说教，从车座会“夺走”她们的“技术处女之身”，到“自行车脸”会破坏女孩的自然美，再到女骑手穿灯笼裤会被视为丑闻。尽管如此，自行车市场依然蓬勃发展。

In 1896, at the age of sixteen, Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of the suffragette leader Emmeline, petitioned her father to buy her a bike. She and her sister Sylvia joined the Clarion Cycle Club in Manchester, an offshoot of the socialist newspaper The Clarion. By 1900, there were seventy Clarion cycling clubs in Britain, all admitting women, who used these clubs to cycle around towns and villages bringing the suffragette message to new parts of the country. The prudish conservative establishment lectured women about everything from the capacity of the saddle to rob their technical virginity, to the impact of “bicycle face” on a girl’s natural prettiness, and the scandal of female cyclists wearing bloomers. Nevertheless, the market for bikes took off.

1890年，美国有27家自行车工厂，年产量为4万辆。到1896年，工厂数量增加到250家，年产量达到1200万辆。波普是当时最大的自行车制造商。到19世纪90年代中期，美国的自行车产量已经达到了每分钟一辆。英国作为世界自行车生产中心，拥有700家工厂。投资者蜂拥而至，希望从中分一杯羹，资金也随之涌入。随着产量的增加，价格开始下降。在美国，1890年至1896年间，自行车的价格几乎减半，从大约150美元降至80美元。为了复制邓禄普的成功，19世纪90年代美国专利局收到的所有专利申请中，有三分之一与自行车相关^。

In 1890, there were 27 factories in the US making 40,000 bikes a year. By 1896 there were 250 factories churning out 12 million bikes per year. Pope, the largest bike maker in the States, was making a bicycle a minute by the middle of the decade. The UK, the bike-producing center of the world, had 700 factories. Money followed the craze as investors flocked to get some of the action. As production ticked upward, prices fell. In the US, between 1890 and 1896, the price of a bicycle almost halved from around $150 to $80. Hoping to cash in on Dunlop-like success, one-third of all patents lodged in the US patent office in the 1890s were bicycle-related.²

金钱轮盘

The money-go-round

十九世纪末新兴的中产阶级不仅用可支配收入购买自行车，而且还开始储蓄，这在以前是富人的专属。大多数中产阶级储户都比较保守——他们把钱存入银行“保管”，领取年利率，却并不真正关心这笔收入的来源。银行则希望从这些存款中获利，于是将资金贷给风险更高的投资项目，以产生回报来支付储户的利息，并从中赚取利润。还有什么地方比殖民地更适合赚钱呢？

The emerging middle class of the late nineteenth century was not only buying bicycles with their disposable income, but was also saving, a practice that was previously the reserve of the very rich. Most middle-class savers were conservative—they put their money into the bank for “safekeeping,” taking an annual interest rate and not really asking where this income came from. The banks sought income on these savings and they lent out to higher-risk investments to generate a return to meet the interest due to savers as well as make a profit for themselves. What better place to make money than the colonies?

哪里有储蓄，哪里就会有金融产品吸引这些储蓄。维多利亚时代晚期是帝国时代，当时的储蓄产品实际上是在押注全球各地的公司。上市公司是首选的投资工具，为投资者提供了在众多新兴行业和地区进行投资的商业机会。我们已经看到，消费品的爆炸式增长意味着对全球原材料需求的增加，这使得全球一体化程度更高。我们当时正处于……这是全球化的第一个时代。邓禄普的发明催生了一条全新的全球供应链，将曼彻斯特的妇女参政论者与考文垂的自行车制造商联系起来，将谢菲尔德的钢铁生产商与比利时刚果腹地的橡胶供应商联系起来。在这张关系网的中心是一家上市公司，它将中产阶级储户与整个产业联系起来。他们的储蓄资助了一个看似无害的自行车产业，但正如我们将看到的，这个产业的背后是一场殖民掠夺以及随之而来的所有恐怖。橡胶将刚果与曼彻斯特的街道连接起来，而金融则将曼彻斯特与伦敦金融城连接起来。

Where there are savings, there will always be financial products to attract those savings. The late Victorian age was the imperial age and those savings products were taking a punt on companies all over the globe. The publicly traded company was the investment vehicle of choice, offering commercial opportunities for investments in a dazzling array of new sectors and regions. We have seen that the explosion in consumer goods meant a rise in demand for raw materials from all over the world, and this made the planet more integrated. We were in the first era of globalization. A new global supply chain sparked by Dunlop’s invention linked suffragettes in Manchester with bike manufacturers in Coventry, and steel producers in Sheffield with suppliers of rubber deep in the Belgian Congo. In the center of this web was the publicly traded company that linked middle-class depositors to the entire venture. Their savings financed a seemingly innocuous bicycle industry but, as we shall see, that industry was underpinned by a colonial heist and all the horror that entailed. Rubber linked the Congo to the streets of Manchester and finance linked it to the City of London.

欧洲的资金在全球范围内搜寻利润。1855年至1900年间，欧洲的对外投资增长了两倍，从46亿美元增至138亿美元。1870年，对外投资占欧洲总收入的7%，但到1914年，这一比例已攀升至20%。在1900年之前的四十年间，英国在世界各地的剥削性项目中投入最多，平均占其年度GDP的4%。^大约三分之一的英国储蓄被转移到国外，用于资助远在海外的公司和项目，这意味着英国庞大的中上层阶级在经济上参与了殖民计划并从中获利。积极的投资者捏着鼻子投入资金，因为对帝国的投资往往比国内投资收益更高。普通储户可能并未意识到他们的钱正在被循环利用到全球经济和殖民计划中。大英帝国就是一台印钞机。但不仅仅是英国。

European money was scouring the world looking for profit. Between 1855 and 1900, foreign investment out of Europe trebled from $4.6 billion to $13.8 billion. In 1870, foreign investments accounted for 7 percent of all European income, but by 1914 they had climbed to 20 percent. The British spent the most—averaging 4 percent of its annual GDP—financing exploitative ventures across the world in the forty years to 1900.³ About a third of all British savings were redirected out of the UK to finance far-flung companies and projects, meaning that a vast swath of British upper- and middle-class people were financially complicit in and profited from the colonial project. Active investors held their noses and committed money because investment in empire tended to yield higher returns than domestic investments. Ordinary savers were probably unaware that their money was being recycled into the global economy and colonial schemes. The British Empire was a money machine. But it wasn’t just Britain.

19世纪的比利时也想拥有殖民地。在1884年至1885年的柏林非洲会议上，利奥波德二世国王说服了他的堂兄弟——其他欧洲君主，让他们相信他在刚果的目标是出于慈善目的，其中包括结束……奴隶贸易——因此，1889年11月，主要强国在布鲁塞尔召开了一次反奴隶制会议。4为了避免彼此发生冲突，英国、法国和德国政府默许了利奥波德对偏远的刚果^的主权声索，因为他们当时正忙于瓜分非洲其他地区。比利时作为欧洲的缓冲国，也成为了法国、英国和德国新殖民地之间在非洲的某种缓冲国。就这样，刚果自由邦或多或少地成为了利奥波德二世国王的私人领地。当他在刚果的代理人告诉他河岸边生长着大量的野生橡胶藤时，利奥波德很快意识到邓洛普的这项创新可能带来的巨大财富。然而，他需要资金才能赚钱。与商业雄心勃勃的伦敦（维多利亚时代的风险投资中心）相比，比利时国内的资本市场规模有限。英国金融家对遥远地区的风险偏好，在掠夺印度之后更加强烈，比保守的比利时勘探者更具冒险精神。英国人能够把握全局，是因为他们已经拓宽了视野。

Nineteenth-century Belgium wanted a colony too, and at the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference on Africa, King Leopold II convinced his cousins, the other European monarchs, that his goals in the Congo were philanthropic, and included ending the slave trade—as a result, in November 1889, an antislavery conference of the major powers was held in Brussels.⁴ The British, French, and German governments acquiesced to Leopold’s claim to remote Congo in order to avoid conflict with each other, as they were busy chopping up the rest of Africa among themselves. Belgium, the buffer state in Europe, also became a sort of buffer state in Africa between the French, British, and new German colonies. And that, more or less, is how the Congo Free State became the personal property of King Leopold II. When his agents in the Congo told him about abundant wild rubber vines growing along the riverbanks, Leopold was quick to recognize the bonanza that Dunlop’s innovation might yield. However, he needed money to make money. The domestic Belgian capital market was constrained in comparison with commercially ambitious London, the venture capital headquarters of the Victorian age. British financiers’ risk appetites for far-flung places, whetted by looting India, were more adventurous than those of staid Belgian prospectors. The British could see the big picture because they’d stretched the canvas.

利奥波德将目光投向伦敦，希望解决他的财政困境。他在奥斯坦德的一场赛马会上结识了一位名叫约翰·托马斯·诺斯的英国人，并说服他投资4万英镑成立一家新公司，系统性地开发刚果马林加-洛波里盆地的橡胶资源。最终，这家公司于1892年8月6日成立，并发展成为世界上最赚钱的公司之一——英比印度橡胶勘探公司（简称ABIR）。

Leopold looked to London to solve his financial dilemma. He persuaded an Englishman, Colonel John Thomas North, whom he had met at a horse race in Ostend, to invest £40,000 in a new company that would systematically exploit the rubber of the Congo’s Maringa-Lopori basin. The result was the formation of what would become one of the world’s most profitable companies, the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company, known as ABIR, on August 6, 1892.

公司结构最初由罗马人设计，后经佛罗伦萨商人复兴，并由荷兰和英国金融家加以改进，是资金在不同司法管辖区之间转移的完美机制。维多利亚时代的酒吧公司凭借其对投资者的法律保护以及可以进入深度和流动性资本市场的交易股票，在一定程度上促成了十九世纪殖民主义在将少数人的金融利益与剥削多数人的利益结合起来方面取得的巨大成功。

The company structure, devised first by the Romans, reinstated by merchants in Florence, and tweaked by Dutch and British financiers, was a perfect mechanism for transporting money from one jurisdiction to another. The Victorian public company—with its legal protection for investors and its tradeable shares that could access a deep and liquid capital market—was partly responsible for nineteenth-century colonialism’s spectacular success in fusing the financial interests of the few in the exploitation of the many.

ABIR的章程细则详细阐述了对股东的保护措施，却对刚果工人的待遇只字未提。仅仅凭借一时金融魔法，这家曾在血腥、污秽和死亡的炼狱中残酷奴役数十万当地人的公司，就能摇身一变，成为拥有干净资产负债表、整洁的股权文件，以及在报纸上随着投资者财富增长而起伏的股价。上市公司的妙处在于，它（在大多数投资者看来）切断了其股票价值与这笔财富令人作呕的来源之间的联系。

ABIR’s memorandum and articles of association detailed the protection offered to its shareholders but had little to say about the conditions of the workers in the Congo. In one moment of financial sorcery, a company that brutally enslaved hundreds of thousands of locals in a hellscape of blood, shit, and death could be transformed into a clean balance sheet, a tidy share document, a sterile share price bobbing up and down in crisp newspaper reports measuring the rising wealth of investors. The beauty of the public share company is that it broke the link (in most investors’ minds) between the value of their share portfolio and the repellent origin of this wealth.

比利时橡胶工业公司（ABIR）持有控制刚果自由邦部分地区橡胶贸易的许可证。这些许可证持有者获得了在马林加-洛波里盆地开采所有森林产品的权利，为期三十年。比利时政府会提供枪支、弹药和士兵，以保护这些殖民者免受当地居民的侵扰，因为他们的土地已被比利时人窃取。这片土地包括世界第二大橡胶林（仅次于亚马逊），从1892年到1906年，比利时人在那里开采橡胶长达十四年。^比利时人一手拿着股份证书，一手拿着机枪，在私人军队的支持下，在窃取的土地上进行着跨国贸易——这种模式此前已被英国东印度公司和荷兰东印度公司（VOC）证明具有不可抗拒的盈利潜力。

ABIR held licenses controlling the rubber trade in sections of the enormous territory called the Congo Free State. The licensees acquired the rights to exploit all the products of the forests in the Maringa-Lopori basin for thirty years. The Belgian state would supply guns, ammunition, and soldiers to protect these colonists from the locals whose land they had stolen. This land included the second-largest rubber forest in the world (after the Amazon) and rubber would be extracted there for fourteen years, from 1892 to 1906.⁵ With a share certificate in one hand and a machine gun in the other, the Belgians went about the business of multinational trading on stolen land, backed by a private army—a model made irresistibly profitable by the British East India Company and the Dutch VOC before them.

虽然开采过程耗时耗力，但与其他大多数自然资源（如钻石或矿物）不同，橡胶种植所需的资本投入极少，对劳动力的培训也无需太多，利润丰厚。如果利奥波德能够建立一套体系，让新征服的当地人通过为橡胶公司工作来向比利时缴纳“税款”，他就能大发横财。

Although time-intensive and physically demanding, unlike most other natural resources, such as diamonds or minerals, harvesting rubber required minimal capital investment and did not involve much training of the labor force. It was pure profit. If Leopold could orchestrate a system whereby the newly conquered locals could pay their “taxes” to Belgium by working for the rubber company, he could make a fortune.

为了钱而残害他人

Mutilating for money

远离曼彻斯特的工厂和世界各大城市自行车穿梭的街道，罗杰·凯斯门特眼睁睁地看着刚果自由邦遍布橡胶种植园、投机者和代理商。当地人民即将遭受惨痛的苦难。在比利时民兵的支持下，橡胶公司将这片殖民地变成了人间炼狱。据估计，1885年至1908年间，刚果自由邦有多达一半的人口，即500万至1000万人丧生。1894年至1905年间，橡胶价格翻了一番，其中大部分来自比利时刚果。橡胶价格的每一次上涨都意味着更多的苦难。随着世界进入汽车时代，对刚果橡胶的需求稳步增长，从1895年的77吨增至1898年的452吨，到1903年达到1048吨。比利时橡胶公司（ABIR）的利润可谓天文数字^。

Far from the factories of Manchester and the cycle-filled streets of the world’s great cities, Roger Casement watched as the Congo Free State filled up with rubber plantations, speculators, and agents. The local people were about to suffer terribly. With the Belgian militia behind them, the rubber companies would turn the colony into a killing field. It is estimated that up to half the population, between 5 and 10 million people, died in the Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908. The price of rubber doubled from 1894 to 1905, and much of it came from the Belgian Congo. Each rise in rubber prices meant more suffering. With the world now on two pneumatic wheels, the demand for rubber from the Congo rose steadily from 77 tons in 1895 to 452 tons by 1898 and reached 1,048 tons by 1903. ABIR’s profits were astronomical.⁶

当地居民被奴役在劳改营中，日夜辛勤劳作以完成配额。那些未能完成配额的人会遭受肉体上的虐待，包括用河马皮鞭（一种用河马皮制成的鞭子）抽打、用柯巴树脂灼烧，有时甚至会被爆头。每个ABIR特工都指挥着一支由25至80名士兵组成的队伍，这些士兵配备比利时制造的步枪，负责惩罚不服从的村民。这支民兵部队被赋予了一个听起来颇为光荣的名字——“公共部队”（Force Publique）。事实上，它是一支杀人队。1903年，一个前哨站^比利时进口了17600发子弹、22755发玩具枪弹药、29255个火帽、33支步枪和126支玩具枪——所有这些并非用于战区，而是为了一个手无寸铁、毫无防备的地区。由于劳动力成本为零，比利时人的主要开支就是这些军火，这导致他们采取了一种极其残酷的成本削减策略。

Enslaved in work camps, the locals toiled day and night to achieve quotas. Those who failed to meet theirs were subjected to physical violence, including whipping by the chicotte (a whip made of hippopotamus hide), burning with gum copal, and sometimes a bullet to the head. Each ABIR agent commanded a force of twenty-five to eighty soldiers armed with Belgian-made rifles to punish recalcitrant villagers. This militia force was given the rather glorious-sounding name of the Force Publique. In truth it was a killing squad. In 1903, one outpost imported 17,600 cartridges, 22,755 loads for cap guns, 29,255 caps, 33 rifles, and 126 cap guns—all this not for a war zone, but an unarmed, defenseless region.⁷ As the cost of labor was zero, the Belgians’ main expense was these munitions, and this led them to a most unspeakable cost-cutting strategy.

大部分“公共部队”（Force Publique）都是些酗酒成性、作风残暴的当地人，由一些比利时小喽啰指挥。他们一丝不苟地控制成本，但布鲁塞尔方面传来消息，说弹药消耗过高，需要进行预算。布鲁塞尔怀疑当地民兵偷窃子弹并转手出售。为了避免浪费和防止盗窃，士兵们被要求提供证据，证明每一颗子弹都用于击毙一名危险的当地人。而所需的证据竟然是一只被砍下的人手。想想看，究竟是怎样一个官僚才会想出这种主意。这些被砍下的手会被熏制保存，然后由欧洲特工收集在篮子里，他们会根据子弹的数量匹配相应数量的被砍手。

Most of the Force Publique were local sadists, boozed up, under the command of small-time Belgians. Assiduous in their cost control, word came in from Brussels that too much ammunition was being used and budgeting was required. Brussels suspected the local militia were stealing bullets and selling them on. To avoid waste and prevent theft, soldiers were required to provide evidence that each bullet had gone toward killing a dangerous local. The evidence demanded was a severed human hand. Consider the type of bureaucrat who came up with that idea. These hands were smoked for preservation, and collected in baskets by European agents who matched the number of bullets with an equivalent number of severed hands.

在安特卫普的码头上，埃德·莫雷尔（ED Morel）——一位在利物浦一家航运公司工作的法英混血职员——目睹了来自刚果的货物被卸下。利奥波德国王向世人宣称，刚果自由邦是一个繁荣的贸易中心，当地人用橡胶和象牙换取比利时最优质的商品。然而，从比利时运往刚果的货物只有弹药和枪支。莫雷尔开始怀疑利奥波德并没有向世人讲述刚果自由邦的全部真相。而他并非唯一心存疑虑的人。

On the docks in Antwerp, E. D. Morel, a French-English clerk in a Liverpool-based shipping company, watched as cargo from the Congo was unloaded. King Leopold claimed to the world that the Congo Free State was a thriving hub where rubber and ivory were being traded with the locals in exchange for the finest Belgian goods. But the only goods leaving Belgium for the Congo were ammunition and guns. Morel began to suspect that Leopold wasn’t telling the world the whole story of the Congo Free State. He wasn’t the only one.

秘密

The secret

在19世纪90年代的大部分时间里，罗杰·凯斯门特一直致力于从非洲收集实地情报。英国贸易委员会。到1898年，他以英国领事的新身份前往伦敦，记录刚果日益严重的暴行。1903年4月，他已在富有的英国橡胶大亨中树敌众多，此时他从巴黎收到一条令他不安的消息。英国功勋卓著的少将赫克托·麦克唐纳在同性恋身份以及与锡兰年轻男子的交往被曝光后，开枪自杀。卡斯门特在彻夜难眠后于日记中写道：“我彻夜未眠。赫克托·麦克唐纳的死令人悲痛。” ⁸ 卡斯门特知道，如果自己的同性恋身份被曝光，他将万劫不复。

Throughout much of the 1890s, Roger Casement had been working to gather on-the-ground intelligence from Africa for the British Board of Trade. By 1898 he was reporting to London in his new role as British consul, documenting the spiraling atrocities in the Congo. In April 1903, now amassing a clutch of enemies among the wealthy and influential British rubber barons, he received news of another kind from Paris that disturbed him. Major General Hector MacDonald, one of Britain’s most decorated soldiers, had shot himself following the revelation of his homosexuality and his liaisons with young men in Ceylon. Casement wrote in his diaries after a sleepless night, “Did not close my eyes. Hector MacDonald’s death very sad.”⁸ Casement knew he’d be toast if news of his own homosexuality were to get out.

1903年5月，下议院就此展开辩论后，外交部指示卡斯门特前往刚果内陆，收集有关当地所谓管理不善的“真实信息”。他的世界即将发生翻天覆地的变化。6月，卡斯门特踏上这段历史性的旅程时，他已近39岁，拥有近20年的非洲经验。他的朋友赫伯特·沃德曾在19世纪80年代与他一同前往刚果，在卡斯门特即将进入公众视野的前夕，沃德写道：“此时此刻，世上无人能比罗杰·卡斯门特更加善良、诚实、高尚。” ⁹公众舆论将会改变。

Following a House of Commons debate in May 1903, Casement was instructed by the Foreign Office to travel to the interior to gather “authentic information” about the alleged maladministration in the Congo. His world was about to change forever. When Casement left on his historic journey in June, he was almost thirty-nine years old, with nearly twenty years’ African experience behind him. His friend Herbert Ward, with whom he had traveled in the Congo in the 1880s, wrote on the eve of Casement’s emergence into the public eye: “No man walks this earth at this moment who is more absolutely good and honest and noble minded than Roger Casement.”⁹ Public opinion would change.

卡斯门特逆流而上，自驾前往，因为他认为依赖官方交通工具只会让他看到比利时人想让他看到的东西。随着他深入橡胶产区，他最糟糕的猜想得到了证实，甚至更加令人震惊。几乎每个村庄，他都目睹了残害、阉割和其他野蛮行径。整个村庄的人口都遭受了毁灭性的打击，一些幸存者也惊恐万分。卡斯门特得知了他们遭受暴力的具体细节。利奥波德国王想要隐瞒的真相即将公之于众。

Casement headed upriver, taking his own transport because depending on official transportation would ensure that he saw only what the Belgians wanted him to see. As he advanced deeper into rubber territory, his worst suspicions were confirmed and more. He witnessed scenes of mutilation, castrations, and other savagery in almost every village. Whole populations were devastated, and some terrified survivors revealed to Casement the specifics of the violence that had been inflicted upon them. The details King Leopold wanted to hide were about to be made public.

1903年10月，卡斯门特带着这份爆炸性材料返回伦敦。他以惊人的精力，在两周内写就了一份长达六十页的旅程记录，其中还附有目击者的证词。莫雷尔（此时他已放弃工作，转而撰写各种文章和小册子揭露刚果自由邦的内幕）认为，这份报告将“给一位与欧洲半数宫廷有着家族关系的在位君主贴上永世难忘的耻辱标签……这份报告最终将永远揭开我们这一代人所见过的最巨大、最邪恶的骗局的面纱。” ¹⁰

In October 1903, Casement returned to London bearing this explosive material. With furious energy, he had produced in two weeks a sixty-page record of his journey complete with eyewitness statements. It was a report which, according to Morel—who had by now abandoned his job to expose the Congo Free State in various articles and pamphlets—was to “brand a reigning sovereign, allied by family connections to half the courts of Europe, with indelible infamy … [a] report which, finally and for all time, was to tear aside the veil from the most gigantic fraud and wickedness which our generation has known.”¹⁰

1903年12月下旬，凯斯门特在伦敦与莫雷尔初次会面。莫雷尔的著作吸引了教会领袖、废奴主义者、传教士以及改革派自由党政治家的关注。在凯斯门特的论证和影响下，这两位道德楷模成为一股不可阻挡的变革力量。他们途经邓莱里（如今凯斯门特的雕像依然矗立在那里）前往爱尔兰，最终抵达纽卡斯尔宁静的斯利夫·多纳德酒店。纽卡斯尔是一座维多利亚时代的滨海小镇，坐落在莫恩山脚下，距离邓禄普发明充气橡胶轮胎的地方仅数英里之遥。他们的会面被阿瑟·柯南·道尔描述为“现代史上最戏剧性的一幕”。 ¹¹这两位仅凭个人积蓄就创立了刚果改革协会。正如凯斯门特所说，“正是刚果的罪恶……促使我们成立一个特殊的机构，向英国的人道主义者发出特别的呼吁。” ¹²卡斯门特和才华横溢的莫雷尔投身于证据收集工作机器记录着一桩又一桩暴行，并产生了大量的罪证，清楚地表明刚果是一个国际犯罪现场。

Casement met Morel for the first time in late December 1903 in London. Morel’s writings were attracting the attention of Church leaders, abolitionists, and missionaries, as well as reformist Liberal politicians. With Casement’s evidence and influence, these two moral dynamos became an irresistible force for change. Traveling to Ireland via Dún Laoghaire (where Casement’s statue stands proudly today), they headed for the tranquility of the Slieve Donard hotel in Newcastle, a Victorian seaside town at the foot of the Mourne mountains, only a few miles from where the pneumatic rubber tire was invented by Dunlop. Their meeting was described by Arthur Conan Doyle as “the most dramatic scene in modern history.”¹¹ With only their personal resources, these two men founded the Congo Reform Association. As Casement said, “it was the unique character of the Congo wickedness … which called for the formation of a special body formulating a very special appeal to the humanity of England.”¹² Casement and the prodigious Morel turned themselves into evidence-gathering machines, documenting atrocity after atrocity and producing a vast body of incriminating facts that made clear the Congo was an international crime scene.

在一段令人震惊的双重标准事件中，英国——这个世界上最贪婪的帝国主义国家，过去三百年间从其殖民地掠夺财富超过任何其他国家的国家——竟然领导了反对帝国主义比利时的运动。这场运动的领导者是刚果改革协会，卡斯门特担任莫雷尔的首席顾问。卡斯门特的官方揭露被广泛报道，使利奥波德国王及其奴隶殖民地蒙受国际社会的谴责。

In a remarkable episode of double standards, Britain, the world’s most rapacious imperialist, the country that over the previous 300 years had plundered more money out of its colonies than any other, led the crusade against imperialist Belgium. At the head of the crusade was the Congo Reform Association, with Casement acting as Morel’s chief advisor. Casement’s official revelations, reported widely, condemned King Leopold and his slave colony to international opprobrium.

鉴于英国作为全球殖民霸主的地位，其对比利时的侵略并非出于保罗式的人道主义和道德感悟。到世纪之交，橡胶对国际经济的价值依然举足轻重，但橡胶产业正从开采转向更为轻松的种植园模式。开采需要耗费大量人力，且面临巨大的热带危险，因为橡胶林仍然难以进入。而种植园则截然不同，它更加清洁便捷。种植园只需要热带气候、平坦的地形和勤劳的劳动力。东南亚，特别是英国殖民地马来亚，无疑是理想的种植园地，这一点不足为奇。关闭刚果的橡胶产业意味着橡胶供应必须来自其他地方；马来亚显然是最佳选择。此外，1899年至1902年的布尔战争以及英国军队在南非的恐吓和暴行，也让伦敦的形象蒙上了一层阴影。公关界最古老的伎俩就是转移人们对自己错误行为的注意力，而凯斯门特关于刚果的报告正是达到了这个目的。

Given its position as the global colonizer-in-chief, Britain’s motives for going after Belgium were not driven by some Pauline conversion to humanity and decency. By the turn of the century, the value of rubber to the international economy remained critical, but the industry was moving away from extraction and toward the much less onerous business of rubber plantations. Extraction involved enormous amounts of manpower and considerable tropical danger, as rubber forests remained inaccessible. Plantation, on the other hand, was a far cleaner, easier business. You required a tropical climate, flat terrain, and a willing workforce. It might not come as any surprise that the ideal environment for this was southeast Asia, specifically the British colony of Malaya. Closing the Congo’s rubber industry would mean the supply of rubber would have to come from elsewhere; Malaya was an obvious candidate. In addition, the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and the intimidation and brutality meted out by British forces in South Africa were painting London in a highly unflattering light. The oldest PR trick in the book is to deflect attention from your own wrongdoing, and Casement’s reports on the Congo served this purpose.

世纪审判

Trial of the century

卡斯门特因其功绩被授予爵位，他的同胞——爱尔兰人——也因此称他为罗杰·卡斯门特爵士。他始终同情爱尔兰民族主义事业，于1911年开始发表反英文章，1913年辞去领事职务，成为一名全职革命者。1916年，卡斯门特身在柏林，试图为即将到来的爱尔兰起义筹集武器。他带着少量军火搭乘潜艇返回爱尔兰，在1916年复活节起义爆发前一周抵达凯里郡。由于胸前口袋里藏着一张柏林地铁票等证据，他被警方逮捕。

Casement was knighted for his services, and it was as Sir Roger Casement that his own people, the Irish, came to know him. Always sympathetic to the Irish nationalist cause, he began to publish anti-British essays in 1911, resigned from the consular service in 1913, and became a full-time revolutionary. By 1916, Casement was in Berlin, attempting to gather arms for the coming rebellion in Ireland. As he headed back to Ireland with modest munitions aboard a submarine, he landed in Kerry a week before the 1916 Rising. Condemned by, among other things, a Berlin metro ticket in his breast pocket, he was picked up by the police.

卡斯门特被控叛国罪，在严密押送下经由邓莱里港被押往伦敦。邓莱里港距离他成长的海滨小村庄桑迪科夫仅一英里。当时世界最著名的辩论家之一萧伯纳主动提出为他撰写辩护词，而柯南·道尔则是他的坚定支持者。卡斯门特拒绝了萧伯纳的提议，亲自撰写了辩护词。审判过程轰动一时。卡斯门特是一位具有全球影响力的人物，他曾揭露比利时在刚果的耻辱，是当时刚刚开始凝聚力量的反殖民斗争的象征，如今却沦为被告。他被判有罪并处以死刑。但他给英国政府带来了一个难题：死后，他将成为烈士；活着，他可能会被监禁，日后被当作与爱尔兰叛军谈判的筹码。伦敦在国际和国内都面临着巨大的压力，要求减刑。 1916 年初夏的几个月里，进行了广泛的讨论，卡斯门特在内阁层面被讨论了不下五次。

Casement was charged with high treason and brought to London under heavy guard, via Dún Laoghaire harbor, a mile from where he was raised in the tiny seaside village of Sandycove. George Bernard Shaw, at that time one of the world’s most famous polemicists, offered to write his defense, and Arthur Conan Doyle was a keen supporter. Declining Bernard Shaw’s offer, Casement penned his own defense. The trial was a box-office sensation. Casement, a figure of global stature, the man who had exposed Belgium’s shame in the Congo, a symbol of the anti-colonial struggle that was just beginning to coalesce, stood accused. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. But he presented a dilemma to the British cabinet: dead, he would be a martyr; alive, he could be imprisoned and later used as a negotiating pawn with the Irish rebels. London came under significant pressure internationally and domestically to commute the sentence. In the early summer months of 1916, there were extensive discussions, and no fewer than five times Casement was discussed at cabinet level.

内阁继续含糊其辞，直到摘录……卡斯门特的日记——据称是他与年轻男子发生性关系的证据——落入了包括美国驻伦敦大使、教会高层、报纸编辑以及爱尔兰裔美国人圈子中颇具影响力的人物手中。关于这些日记是精心伪造的论点从未消失。无论真假，所谓的“黑色日记”都注定了卡斯门特的命运：根深蒂固的恐同症和道德保守主义媒体借此大肆炒作。叛国罪已经够糟糕了，但同性恋更是将英国中产阶级推向了悬崖边缘。在英国处于战争时期，撤销一位革命者的死刑是一回事；撤销一位爱尔兰同性恋叛徒的死刑，即使是内阁中最开明的成员也难以接受。1916年8月3日，卡斯门特在彭顿维尔监狱被处以绞刑。

The cabinet continued to prevaricate until extracts of Casement’s diaries—which were purported to evidence his sexual relations with young men—happened to find their way into the hands of people in power, including the US ambassador to London, senior churchmen, newspaper editors, and those with influence in Irish-American circles. Arguments that the diaries were cleverly concocted forgeries have never gone away. Forgeries or not, the so-called Black Diaries sealed Casement’s fate: the deeply homophobic, morally conservative press had a field day. Treason was bad enough, but homosexuality tipped middle England over the cliff. Rescinding the death sentence of a revolutionary when Britain was at war was one thing; rescinding the death sentence of an Irish homosexual traitor was beyond even the most liberal members of the cabinet. On August 3, 1916, Casement was hanged in Pentonville Prison.

终局

Endgame

在全球化初期，那些积累了巨额财富的人往往掌控着话语权，而罗杰·凯斯门特是一位人道主义活动家，他主张人们拥有比金钱更崇高的权利来决定一切。年轻的印度人贾瓦哈拉尔·尼赫鲁，早年在探望在都柏林学习医学的表兄时接触到了爱尔兰民族主义，他密切关注着凯斯门特的审判，并深受爱尔兰起义者的革命思想的影响。他沉思道，凯斯门特在法庭上的演讲“似乎精准地指出了一个被统治民族应该有的感受”。 ¹³ 殖民主义达到了顶峰，在接下来的几十年里，它开始受到进一步的挑战。尼赫鲁深受凯斯门特的启发，凭借全球视野，他带领印度在 1947 年走向独立，并成为印度第一任总理。

In a world where the narrative tended to be controlled by those who amassed great fortunes in the first era of globalization, Roger Casement was a humanitarian activist who spoke about greater rights than the right of money to dictate outcomes. Jawaharlal Nehru, a young Indian, who had earlier come across Irish nationalism while visiting his cousin (who was studying medicine in Dublin), followed the trial and was influenced by the revolutionary message of the Irish insurrectionists. He mused that Casement’s speech in court “seemed to point out exactly how a subject nation should feel.”¹³ Colonialism had reached its apogee and, in the decades to come, it began to be challenged further. Nehru, inspired by Casement’s global vision, would lead India to independence in 1947 and become its first prime minister.

列宁曾指出，殖民主义是资本主义的巅峰。¹⁴当时，权力天平过度向那些掠夺、积累和囤积财富的人倾斜。十九世纪见证了长达一百年的金钱无情扩张，金钱决定了谁拥有什么，谁统治谁，哪些国家被征服，哪些国家成为胜利者。同时，金融、股票市场和国际资本流动方面的创新，也使全球大片地区融入了世界货币体系。然而，随着1914年欧洲帝国主义列强之间的战争，全球化进程戛然而止。这个时代始于荷兰商业的崛起，其背后是荷兰金融的雄厚实力；二十世纪初，殖民主义猖獗，掠夺成性，殖民主义盛行，而当面对凯斯门特等国际主义活动家和民族解放斗争时，这个时代开始瓦解。

Lenin observed that colonialism was peak capitalism.¹⁴ The pendulum had swung too far in the interests of those who expropriated, accumulated, and hoarded money. The nineteenth century had seen a hundred relentless years of the march of money, which dictated who got what, who ruled whom, which nations were subjugated, and which were victors. It was also a century where innovations in finance, stock markets, and international flows of capital brought huge swaths of the globe into a worldwide monetary system. This period of globalization came to a crashing end when the imperial countries of Europe set upon each other in 1914. An era that began with the unlikely expansion of mercantile Holland, driven by the prowess of Dutch finance, reached its zenith in the early years of the twentieth century with rampant and rapacious colonialism, and began to fall apart when faced with internationalist campaigners like Casement and nationalist liberation struggles.

在随后的几年里，这种思潮又转向了各种各样的“主义”：共产主义、社会主义、马克思主义、费边主义，以及我们在此重点讨论的——反殖民主义。每个时代或意识形态都埋下了自身毁灭的种子。19世纪末的超级资本主义，虽然对那些非常富有、非常白皙、非常欧洲化的人来说极其成功，但对那些遭受殖民、羞辱和恐怖统治的人来说，却是截然不同的景象。罗杰·凯斯门特本人并非马克思主义者，他更倾向于自由主义。作为公平贸易的倡导者，他认为那些开采橡胶等商品的人——无论是刚果人还是秘鲁的土著部落——都应该受到人道的对待。他反对掠夺性资本主义和极端主义。剥削。作为当时在爱尔兰和英国基层活跃的改革传统的一部分，卡斯门特被构建一个更加公正的社会的可能性所吸引。他所倡导的反殖民运动成为二十世纪最重要的政治力量之一，其根源在于此前三个世纪的暴行，其中大多数都是为了追求金钱。尽管当时并不明显，但卡斯门特的审判是一个关键的转折点。

In the subsequent years, that pendulum swung back toward a variety of isms: communism, socialism, Marxism, Fabianism, and the one we focus on here—anticolonialism. Every era or ideology sows the seeds of its own destruction, and the hypercapitalism of the late nineteenth century, although extremely successful if you were very rich, very white, and very European, was a different story if you were colonized, humiliated, and terrorized. No Marxist himself, Roger Casement was more of a liberal. A fair trade advocate, he believed that those who extracted commodities such as rubber—whether they be Congolese or indigenous tribes in Peru—should be treated humanely. He was against extractive capitalism and extreme exploitation. Part of a reforming tradition that was active at a grassroots level in both Ireland and Britain at the time, Casement was drawn to the possibilities of building a more socially just world. The anticolonial movement he championed became one of the most significant political forces of the twentieth century, and its genesis lay in the atrocities of the previous three centuries, most carried out in pursuit of money. Although it was not obvious at the time, the trial of Casement was a pivotal moment.

1922年，爱尔兰获得独立的那一年，引发橡胶热潮的发明家约翰·邓洛普被安葬在都柏林的迪恩斯格兰奇公墓。如果没有邓洛普的创新，比利时在刚果的暴行或许就不会发生，凯斯门特或许也不会成为全球革命家，而他也不会在彭顿维尔监狱被绞死，而是会安详地去世，葬在距离邓洛普墓地仅几码之遥的家族墓地里。

In 1922, the year Ireland achieved independence, John Dunlop, the inventor who had sparked the rubber boom, was buried in Deansgrange cemetery in Dublin. Had it not been for Dunlop’s innovation, there might not have been any Belgian atrocities in the Congo, Casement might not have become a global revolutionary, and, instead of being hanged in Pentonville Prison, he might have died peacefully, buried in the family plot only yards away from Dunlop’s resting place.

《绿野仙踪》

The Wizard of Oz

《绿野仙踪》至今仍是美国历史上最受欢迎的电影之一。在人们还习惯于坐在电视机前观看电视节目的年代，这部美国儿童故事是圣诞节的必备节目，而故事的核心却是金钱。更具体地说，它讲述了在19世纪末通货紧缩的背景下，争取美国放弃金本位制的民粹主义运动。虽然大多数美国人将《绿野仙踪》视为一部天真无邪的儿童童话，但这部电影实际上是一部极具政治意味的寓言。它讲述了阶级斗争和文化战争的故事，一方是金融精英与工人阶级，一方是富裕的东海岸与乡村的南部和西部地区，另一方是既有的政党与19世纪90年代兴起的民粹主义运动。

The Wizard of Oz remains one of the most watched American movies of all time. The staple of Christmas viewing back in the days when people sat in front of terrestrial TV, this American children’s story is all about money. More specifically, it concerns the populist movement that fought to bring the US off the Gold Standard against the backdrop of late nineteenth-century deflation. While most Americans see The Wizard of Oz as an innocent children’s fairy tale, the film is a highly political allegory. It is the story of class struggle and a culture war between the financial elite and the workingman, the moneyed East Coast and the rural South and West, and the established political parties and an insurrectionist movement—the Populists—that emerged in the 1890s.

在电影中，我们可以将邪恶的巫师奥兹解读为银行精英的化身，同时也是黄金的象征，oz是盎司的符号。黄砖路代表金本位制本身，是一条由金条铺成的道路。多萝西是堪萨斯州的农家女，堪萨斯州在地理上与美国相邻。它位于美国中部，象征着那个虚构的“美国中部”。稻草人代表着饱受物价下跌之苦的中西部农民，铁皮人则代表着同样因金本位制下的通货紧缩而收入减少的产业工人。胆小的狮子则是1896年总统大选中民主党和民粹党合并的候选人威廉·詹宁斯·布莱恩。

In the film, we can read Oz, the evil Wizard, as the embodiment of the banking elite and also a stand-in for gold, oz being the symbol for an ounce. The Yellow Brick Road represents the Gold Standard itself, a pathway made of gold bars. Dorothy is the farmer’s daughter from Kansas, the state geographically smack in the middle of the country, representing that mythical place, middle America. The Scarecrow is the Midwestern farmer, put upon by falling prices, and the Tin Man is the industrial worker whose wages are also falling, impacted by deflation associated with the Gold Standard. The Cowardly Lion is the merged Democrat-Populist candidate in the 1896 presidential election, William Jennings Bryan.

在多萝西和她的朋友们——一群美国工薪阶层——进入翡翠城之前，他们被要求戴上绿色的眼镜。换句话说，掌控翡翠城的保守金融家们强迫城里的居民用金钱的视角看待世界。为了满足巫师的愿望，他们必须前往西部，消灭他的敌人——邪恶女巫。西部象征着美国的中西部，农业中心地带，也是民粹主义运动的发源地。在故事的每个阶段，多萝西都被巫师利用，维护翡翠城的规则和支持金本位制的富裕美国人的利益。在巫师的授意下，她杀死了女巫，并和朋友们一起返回翡翠城，自信地认为巫师会满足他们的愿望。然而，当他们揭开巫师的真面目时，却发现他不过是个骗子——就像金本位制一样。虽然在电影版中多萝西的鞋子是红色的，但在电影原著小说中，她的鞋子是银色的。要回到堪萨斯，多萝西只需将她银鞋的鞋跟碰在一起。解决她问题的力量——通过增加货币储备中的白银——一直都在那里。

Before Dorothy and her friends, working Americans, can enter the Emerald City, they are ordered to wear green-colored spectacles. The conservative financiers who run the Emerald City, in other words, force its citizens to look at the world through money-colored lenses. To satisfy the Wizard, the group must travel to the West and destroy his enemy, the Wicked Witch. The West represents the Midwest of America, the farming heartland and the source of the Populist movement. At every stage, Dorothy is being used by the Wizard to uphold the rules of the Emerald City and the interests of rich Americans who support the Gold Standard. At his behest, she kills the Witch and returns with her friends to the Emerald City confident that the Wizard will grant them their wishes. When they unmask the Wizard, however, they discover he is nothing but a fraud—as is the Gold Standard. Although Dorothy’s shoes are red in the film version, in the novel that the film is based on her shoes are silver. To return to Kansas, Dorothy need only click the heels of her silver shoes together. The power to solve her problems—by adding silver to the money stock—was there all the time.

《绿野仙踪》背后的政治寓意是，以多萝西为代表的普通美国人可以通过摆脱金本位制的束缚，转而使用更宽松的银本位制货币体系而获得解放。虽然这听起来可能有些晦涩，但十九世纪最后一次美国大选的焦点恰恰在于此：货币的支撑物究竟是金还是银^？

The political message behind The Wizard of Oz was that the average American, embodied by Dorothy, could be liberated by a move from the straightjacket of the Gold Standard to the looser jersey of a silver-backed currency. While this may seem obscure, the last US election of the nineteenth century was fought on this very issue: What backs money, silver or gold?¹

金十字架

Crucifixion by gold

在19世纪末科学和医学取得突破、各领域技术进步以及经验主义和理性主义革命的背景下，人们或许会预期货币组织方式会发生重大变革。鉴于18世纪的实验，以及纸币在推动和资助法国大革命和美国革命中所发挥的革命性作用，人们理所当然地会认为19世纪的金融变革者会吸取以往的教训，并在货币方面继续创新。然而，事实并非如此。

Against a late nineteenth-century background of breakthroughs in science and medicine, technological advances across a range of areas and an empirical and rational revolution, you might expect that significant changes would have emerged in the way we organize money. Given the experimentation in the eighteenth century, and the revolutionary power of paper money in propelling and financing both the French and American revolutions, it would have been logical to predict that financial disruptors of the nineteenth century would have learned from former mistakes and continued to innovate with currency. This didn’t happen.

相反，我们经历了金本位制时代，大约从1850年持续到1914年，这是一个货币保守主义和小政府的漫长时期。政治和金融界对革命时期纸币实验引发的巨大动荡心存戒备。金本位制被视为抵御危险的社会和政治变革的堡垒。这一体系中，所有货币都以世界有限的黄金供应为支撑，成为全球经济和货币政策的核心支柱。货币与黄金挂钩的机制意味着货币永远短缺，因为黄金永远短缺。这样的体系适合那些已经拥有财富的人。但是，对于一个不断发展的经济体来说，合适的货币量是多少呢？

Instead, we had the era of the Gold Standard, which lasted from approximately 1850 to 1914, a long period of monetary conservatism and small government. The political and financial establishment was wary of the paper money experiments of the revolutionary times, which had caused such tremendous instability. The Gold Standard was regarded as a bulwark against dangerous social and political change. This system, whereby all money was backed by the world’s limited gold supply, became the central plank of global economic and monetary policy. A scheme that ties money to gold means that there will always be a shortage of money because there is always a shortage of gold. Such a system suits those who already have money. But what is the right amount of money for a growing economy?

那些支持“货币过剩”观点的人，很可能就是那些已经拥有大量财富的人。相反，那些主张货币不足的人，很可能就是那些缺乏资金的人。为了理解新世纪之交的政治格局以及这两种对立的观点，我们需要了解以下几点。围绕美元是否与黄金或白银挂钩的问题而出现的阵营之间发生了冲突，我们需要回顾一下美国的货币史，以及美国在内战后做出的一个重大决定。

Those who support the idea that there’s already too much money out there are likely to be those people who already have plenty of money. In contrast, the people who advocate that there’s not enough cash out there are likely to be those who don’t have enough money. To understand the political landscape at the turn of the new century, and the two opposing camps that emerged to clash over the question of whether to tie the US currency to gold or silver, we need to go back and trace a bit of American monetary history and a momentous decision taken by the US after the Civil War.

1873年，美国将美元与黄金挂钩。1848年加州淘金热彻底改变了美国的黄金政治格局：此前，美国尚未发现任何天然黄金资源，但淘金热的发现使美国得以考虑建立以黄金为基础的货币体系。然而，对于一个计划接纳数百万移民的国家而言，实行金本位制意味着随着人口激增，人均货币发行量将会下降。当时，美国已经拥有一种广为人知的货币——汉密尔顿银元，这种货币一直在流通。在加州金矿被发现之前，现有的银本位制维持了美国的金融秩序，并赋予美国更大的灵活性，因为白银比黄金便宜，可以印制更多货币。然而，淘金热之后，金价对白银下跌，这改变了人们对采用金本位制的态度。此外，美国金融家担心，对黄金趋之若鹜的国际投资者可能会认为美国的银本位制是二流的。美国作为当今的全球超级大国，在十九世纪末期却感到需要依靠黄金，并且没有足够的自信在世界上独立发展，这表明华盛顿当时如何看待自己在全球经济秩序中的地位。

In 1873, America tied the dollar to gold. The politics of gold in the US had been upended in 1848 by the California gold rush: up to then, America had no known natural sources of the precious metal, but after this discovery it became possible for America to contemplate a monetary future based around gold. And yet for a country intent on taking in millions of immigrants, locking itself into a Gold Standard would mean that the amount of money that could be issued would fall per head as the population surged. America already had a well-understood currency in Hamilton’s silver dollar, which remained in circulation. Up until the discovery of Californian gold, financial control and order was achieved with the existing silver standard, and this gave the US more flexibility because it could print more money, silver being cheaper than gold. After the gold rush, however, the price of gold fell against silver and this changed attitudes toward adopting the Gold Standard. In addition, American financiers were worried that international investors, addicted to gold, might regard an American silver standard as second-rate. That the US, today’s global superpower, felt the need to hitch its wagon to gold in the late nineteenth century, and didn’t have the self-confidence to go it alone in the world, indicates where Washington saw itself in the global economic pecking order.

黄金的供应量是固定的：如果经济增长，意味着经济生产更多产品，那么这些产品的价格以黄金计价必然下降，因为黄金的供应量不会随着经济产出的增长而增加。将货币与黄金挂钩本质上就具有通缩效应。价格下跌听起来……很好，不是吗？我们已经习惯这样看待价格。买的东西价格下跌当然是好事。但这也有两面性。如果你卖的东西，比如你的劳动，也对黄金贬值呢？在通货紧缩时期，谁的生活水平会提高？当然是那些拥有黄金的人。这意味着金融从业者、货币交易者或投机者，那些能够接触到资金的人——也就是那些已经很富有的人。与黄金挂钩的货币会奖励那些有储蓄的人。19世纪末谁有储蓄？还是那些一直以来都有储蓄的人：当然是富人。

Gold has a fixed supply: if the economy grows, meaning the economy produces more things, the price of those things must fall in gold terms, because the supply of gold doesn’t rise in response to the rise in the economy’s output. Tethering a currency to gold is inherently deflationary. Falling prices sounds good, doesn’t it? We are conditioned to think about prices in this way. It is good if the price of things you buy falls. But this cuts both ways. What if the things you sell, like your labor, also fall against gold? In a period of deflation, whose standard of living rises? The people with gold, of course. That means people in finance, people trading money or speculating on other commodities, those with access to money—the already wealthy. Currencies linked to gold will reward people with savings. Who in the late nineteenth century had savings? The same people who have always had savings: rich people, of course.

还有另一种动态因素会加剧这种不平等。如果人均货币供应量下降，商品价格和工资会下降，但资产价格却会发生不同的变化。当货币与黄金挂钩且供应短缺时，经济体如何为投资、建设或未来投机融资？答案是通过信贷。银行系统会相应地调整以提供信贷。现在，让我们从经济层面来看待这个问题。信贷市场会急剧扩张，推高资​​产价格，这通常会使经济陷入信贷周期。当日常物价和工资停滞不前时，资产价格却在上涨，投机者阶层因此变得极其富有，从而加剧了依赖工资收入的劳动者与依赖租金、股息和资产价格收入的富人之间的鸿沟。 2008 年之后，大多数西方经济体也出现了类似的动态，各国央行向银行提供非常便宜的信贷，而这些银行又将这些信贷贷给“有信用”的客户——也就是那些已经投资于住房等资产的富人——从而推高了资产价格，使其远远高于工资水平。

There is another dynamic that can reinforce this inequality. If the supply of money per head is declining, the price of goods and wages falls but something else happens to asset prices. When money is tied to gold and in short supply, how does the economy finance investment, building, or speculation on the future? It does so via credit. The banking system adjusts accordingly to provide that credit. Now consider this at an economy-wide level. Credit markets expand dramatically, pushing up asset prices, which typically ensnare the economy in a credit cycle. As asset prices rise at a time when everyday prices and wages are stagnant, a speculator class becomes enormously wealthy, driving a wedge between the workers—those who depend on wages for their income—and the wealthy—those who depend on rents, dividends, and asset prices for their income. A similar dynamic played out after 2008 in most Western economies as central banks made very cheap credit available to banks and those banks lent this to “creditworthy” clients—namely the already rich who had invested in assets such as housing—driving up asset prices way above wages.

内战结束后，美国经济蓬勃发展，吸引了众多欧洲资金，但白银与黄金之间激烈的争论却让欧洲人心生疑虑，因为这有可能导致金银贬值。货币方面，如果美国想要增发美元以缓解经济困境和政治紧张局势，美元贬值就存在风险。当时，世界各国尚未确信美国有足够的政治魄力继续维持金本位制。这种信誉的缺失意味着，尽管美国经济增长迅速，但仍然存在风险，因此它不得不向欧洲提供更高的利率，以鼓励他们持有其债务。高昂的借贷成本意味着美国需要更加依赖与世界其他地区的巨额贸易顺差，而在19世纪末，这几乎就意味着与欧洲的贸易顺差。

After the Civil War, the growing US economy was a magnet for European funds, but the vibrant silver versus gold debate planted doubt in the European mind as it threatened to devalue the currency. If the US wanted to print more dollars to ease financial privations and political tensions, dollar devaluation was a risk. The world was yet to be convinced that the United States had the political stomach to remain on the Gold Standard. This lack of credibility implied that, despite its growth rates, America was risky, and so it had to offer higher interest rates to Europeans to encourage them to hold its debts. Expensive borrowing meant more reliance on running large trade surpluses with the rest of the world, which in the late nineteenth century more or less meant Europe.

自然之力使美国免于长期的黄金危机。19世纪70年代末，一系列欧洲作物歉收和异常天气拯救了美国。1879年5月，法国下雪，类似的恶劣天气也席卷了中欧和俄罗斯。十年来，欧洲发展最快的贸易中心敖德萨港首次不再因俄罗斯小麦运往欧洲而人满为患。小麦短缺推高了欧洲小麦价格，而大西洋彼岸的美国则迎来丰收，确保了美国小麦供应世界——当然，价格也居高不下。随着小麦的运输，黄金也随之流动。次年，宾夕法尼亚州发现石油，美国的黄金储备进一步增加。美国的石油和小麦运往欧洲，帮助美国维持金本位制，同时又不至于扼杀当时正以每周数千名欧洲移民（最初是爱尔兰人，然后是意大利人和犹太人）为主的经济。

Acts of nature saved the USA from perennial gold crises. In the late 1870s, a series of European crop failures and unusual weather patterns bailed out America. In May 1879, it snowed in France, and similarly poor weather afflicted central Europe and Russia. For the first time in a decade, the port of Odesa, Europe’s fastest-growing trading center, was not straining at the seams with Russian wheat to ship to Europe. The shortage pushed European wheat prices skyward, while across the Atlantic, a bumper harvest ensured that American wheat fed the world—at high prices. As wheat traveled one way, gold traveled the other. America’s gold stock increased further the following year with the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania. US oil and wheat were traveling to Europe, helping America maintain the Gold Standard without strangling an economy that at this stage was absorbing thousands of European immigrants per week, first Irish, then Italians and Jews.

丰收和好运为美国带来了大量黄金，但与此同时，由于同样的原因，大量来自欧洲的移民也涌入美国：歉收则意味着移民。当黄金跨越大西洋向西流淌时，越来越多的人涌入美国，导致人均黄金持有量下降。尽管经济在增长，但这种增长的成果在社会和地域上并没有均衡地分配。

Good harvests and good luck for the United States meant that gold flowed in, but so too did these immigrants from Europe driven out by the same process: bad harvests meant emigration. While gold flowed west across the Atlantic, more and more people continued to arrive in America, causing the overall gold per person ratio to deteriorate. Even though the economy was growing, the fruits of this growth were not evenly spread, socially or geographically.

这种情况可能会持续一段时间，尤其是在工人没有途径表达不满的情况下。但民主制度拥有一种名为投票箱的机制，它能够解决这类困境。到19世纪末，美国普遍实行选择性民主（剥夺了妇女和某些少数族裔的投票权），而在民主制度下，有利于富人的货币体系会成为一个核心问题。穷人或许没有直接利益，但他们拥有投票权。对于19世纪80年代和90年代的美国人来说，金本位制成为了一个具有象征意义的问题。穷人希望美国回归银本位制，以促进货币流通。富人则希望维持金本位制，巩固其顶层地位。1896年大选的口号是“银本位制而非金本位制”——这是一场工人阶级与精英阶层之间的较量。正如威廉·詹宁斯·布莱恩（在我们《绿野仙踪》寓言中的胆小狮）在芝加哥民主党全国代表大会上对银行家、金融家和黄金狂热分子所说：“你们不能将这荆棘冠冕压在劳动者的额头上。你们不能将人类钉在黄金的十字架上。”

This situation can last for a while, particularly if there is no way for the workers to exhibit their displeasure. But democracies come with a device called the ballot box which has a way of dealing with such dilemmas. By the end of the century, a selective form of democracy (which didn’t give women and certain minorities the vote) was the norm in the US and, in a democracy, a monetary system that favors the already wealthy becomes a central issue. The poor might not have a stake, but they have a vote. For Americans in the 1880s and 1890s, the Gold Standard would become the totemic issue. The poor wanted the US to move back to a silver system that would allow more money to circulate. The rich wanted the Gold Standard to remain in place, cementing their position at the top. The rallying cry of the 1896 election was “Silver instead of Gold”—it was the workingman versus the elite. As William Jennings Bryan (the Cowardly Lion in our Wizard of Oz allegory) said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, taking aim at bankers, financiers, and gold bugs, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

迪克西兰

Dixieland

19世纪30年代，路易斯安那银行发行了十美元纸币。由于该地区法语人口众多，这种十美元纸币最初以法语名称“ dix ”为人所知，意为“十”。但英语使用者并不像法语那样发音“ deece ” （x发软音），因此最终演变为“dix”（x发硬音） 。路易斯安那州是富饶的港口城市路易斯安那的所在地。新奥尔良所在的州经济富裕，发行了南方最可靠的货币。路易斯安那银行发行的货币“迪克西” （Dix ）在邻近的南方邦联各州广泛流通。淘金热期间， “迪克西”的影响力急剧上升，因为新奥尔良是加利福尼亚黄金存放的第一个港口：虽然现在很难理解，但当时用船绕过合恩角，再从另一侧运到新奥尔良，成本反而更低。新奥尔良的黄金越多，印制的纸币也就越多。久而久之，南方邦联就被称为“迪克西兰”（Dixieland）。

In the 1830s, the Bank of Louisiana issued a ten-dollar note. Due to the preponderance of Francophones in the region, the ten-dollar note was known by a French name, dix, meaning “ten.” But the English speakers didn’t pronounce the x in the French way (“deece” with a soft x) and so it became dix with a hard x. Louisiana, home to the wealthy port of New Orleans, was a rich state, and printed the most credible currency in the South. The currency of the Bank of Louisiana, the dix, became widely used in the adjacent Confederate states. The impact of the dix increased dramatically during the gold rush because New Orleans was the first port that Californian gold was deposited in: difficult as it is to understand now, it was cheaper to transport Californian gold by ship all the way down around Cape Horn and up the other side to New Orleans. The more gold in New Orleans, the more banknotes printed. In time, the Confederacy became known as Dixieland.

内战的遗留问题在美国政治中始终占据核心地位。南北双方都需要资金来打仗，因此都发行了纸币，并以己方贷款作为担保。例如，投资者会投资联邦政府的借据，联邦政府利用这些资金印制纸币，而这些纸币除了胜利的承诺之外，没有任何实际的支撑。为了保证资金来源，联邦政府承诺以金币支付债券利息给贷款方，但却以纸币的形式支付士兵的薪饷，这些纸币后来被称为“绿背钞”。

The legacy of the Civil War remained central to American politics. Both the North and the South had needed money to fight and both resorted to issuing paper money, backed by loans from their own side. For instance, investors would invest in Union government IOUs and with this money in the Treasury, the Union government printed paper money with nothing to back it but the promise of victory. To keep money coming in, the Union government undertook to pay the interest on their bonds to the lender in gold coins, but paid their soldiers in notes, which became known as “greenbacks.”

据估计，南方邦联政府开战时的实际资产不足4000万美元。如此匮乏的资源，如何才能打赢一场旷日持久的战争？邦联采取了所有走投无路的金融家都会采取的策略：承诺战后偿还所有债务。富有的地主、奴隶主、棉花种植园主以及普通中产阶级都为战争提供了资金。政府用仅有的硬通货购买枪支弹药，并借贷各种贷款，其中许多贷款以未来的棉花收成作抵押。为了支付士兵的薪水，邦联还发行了自己的邦联银元。由于邦联的所有资源都投入到了战争中，通货膨胀急剧上升。由此可见当时情况有多糟糕：在北方联邦各州，1860年价值100美元的商品，到1865年涨到了146美元；而在南方，同样的商品，1860年价值100美元，到1865年飙升至9211美元^。

It is estimated that the Southern Confederate government started the war with less than $40 million in real assets. How could you fight a prolonged war with such meager resources? The Confederacy did what all desperate financiers do: it promised to pay everything back on victory. Wealthy landowners, slave owners, cotton plantation owners, and the ordinary middle class lent money for the war effort. The government used what hard currency it had to buy guns and ammunition and used a variety of loans, many collateralized by pledges of future cotton harvests. To pay the soldiers, it printed its own Confederate dollars. With all the resources of the Confederacy going to the war effort, inflation exploded. Just to give you an idea of how bad things were, in the Northern Union states goods that cost $100 in 1860 had increased to $146 by 1865; in the South the same goods that cost $100 in 1860 soared to $9,211 by 1865.²

战后，南方邦联政府不复存在，南方债券持有人无力偿还。北方拒绝兑付其昔日敌人发行的任何如今已一文不值的欠条。战败使南方大部分地区陷入破产。南方各州不仅遭受了耻辱性的失败，而且战后沦为最贫困的地区。这些州在战前曾是美国最富裕的地区，拥有土地、农业和奴隶。它们的基础设施遭到破坏，既没有资金，也没有任何类似马歇尔计划的援助来重建家园。

After the war, there was no Confederate government to pay back Southern bondholders. The Northern side refused to redeem any of the now-worthless IOUs issued by its former enemy. Losing the war condemned much of the South to bankruptcy. As well as suffering a humiliating defeat, the Southern states, which had been the richest part of the US before the war, based on land, agriculture, and slaves, ended up being the poorest. Their infrastructure was destroyed, and they had no capital or any Marshall Plan–type aid to rebuild with.

南方破产后，民众对华盛顿及其共和党和商业精英组成的亲密联盟的怨恨不难理解。那些将所有黄金都捐献给南方邦联的富裕南方人，如今却濒临贫困。与此同时，主要依赖棉花种植的南方农民眼睁睁地看着棉花价格暴跌。不出所料，南方一片沸腾。在接下来的几年里，为此付出最大代价的是那些贫穷的黑人前奴隶。尽管他们在名义上获得了自由，却仍然受到19世纪80年代逐步推行的种族歧视性吉姆·克劳法的压迫。白人的贫困甚至可能加剧了废奴运动胜利后几十年里南方黑人所遭受的恐怖统治。

The resentment in the bankrupt South toward Washington and its cozy consensus of Republicans and the business elite is not difficult to comprehend. Wealthy Southerners who had given all their gold to the Confederate cause were now flirting with poverty. Meanwhile, Southern farmers, largely dependent on cotton, saw the price of their product fall. Not surprisingly, the South seethed. In the ensuing years, the people who paid most for this were the poor Black ex-slaves. Though technically liberated, they came to be governed by the racist Jim Crow laws that were introduced piecemeal over the 1880s. The impoverishment of the whites may even have exacerbated the terror visited on the Southern Black population in the decades after the victory of the antislavery cause.

与之形成鲜明对比的是，华尔街蓬勃发展。这个幅员辽阔、动荡不安、暴力频发的国家为投机提供了各种各样的机会。移民的涌入使这个原本就充满活力的社会更加疯狂。这是一个巨额财富诞生与消逝的时代，是像康奈利厄斯·范德比尔特和杰伊·古尔德这样的商业巨头的时代，这个时代后来被称为镀金时代。在他1899年的畅销书《 在《有闲阶级论》中，经济学家和社会学家索尔斯坦·凡勃伦记录了这个新兴富裕阶级的过度消费，表明华尔街挥霍无度的同时，美国农村却遭受了损失。

In contrast, Wall Street boomed. This vast, unstable, violent country offered all sorts of opportunities for speculation. Immigrants made a go-getting society even more frenetic. This was an era when great fortunes were made and lost, the era of magnates like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould, which became known as the Gilded Age. In his 1899 bestseller, The Theory of the Leisure Class, economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen would document the excessive consumption of this new moneyed class, showing that as Wall Street splurged, rural America suffered.

在中西部地区，铁路和金本位制的结合对农民产生了极其负面的影响。铁路的繁荣使数百万英亩的耕地得以开垦。这增加了玉米和小麦的供应量，并压低了它们的价格。那些为了购买农机和土地而贷款的农民发现自己的债务越来越重。他们的债务是以黄金为支撑的美元计价的，而金价却在上涨；但他们的收入却是农作物，随着土地供应量的增加，农作物的价格却持续下跌。在这个国家的农业核心地带，这些农民的资产负债表迅速崩溃，而铁路大亨们的财富却飞速增长。

In the Midwest, the combination of the railroads and the Gold Standard had a profoundly negative effect on farmers. The railway boom brought millions of acres of arable land under tillage. This increased the supply of corn and wheat, and pushed their prices downward. Farmers who had borrowed for machinery and to purchase land found themselves increasingly indebted. Their debts were in gold-backed dollars, and the price of gold was rising, but their income was in crops, and as the supply of land expanded, the price of those crops continued to fall. In the country’s agricultural heartland, the balance sheets of these farmers imploded while the wealth of the railroad bosses soared.

1870年，堪萨斯州的农民每蒲式耳玉米能卖到43美分；20年后，他们每蒲式耳只能卖到10美分，甚至低于生产成本。3^一场名为“农民联盟”的农业运动应运而生，其最初是一个旨在通过合作社的形式与大宗买家谈判来增强生产者力量的组织。该合作社通过开设图书馆和散发各种（在当时看来）激进的农业改革小册子，扩大了其在农村的影响力。农民联盟的成员遍布中西部地区。其宣言的核心内容包括限制铁路公司的权力、向负债农民提供联邦贷款，以及进行货币改革，其中包括重新发行汉密尔顿的旧银元和金元，以缓解货币压力，使债务人有机会偿还贷款。该联盟还倡导妇女选举权等进步议题。尽管政客们（无论是共和党人还是民主党人）都发表了空洞的言论，但他们实际上并没有采取任何行动。这些措施并未能消除农民们的担忧。但当中西部的小麦和玉米种植户与南部的棉花种植户联合起来时，一股新的政治力量即将崛起。随着东北部投机者阶层的财富积累，以及南部和中西部农村农民阶层被金本位制货币体系束缚，美国民主制度的变革已然来临。

In 1870, farmers in Kansas received 43 cents for a bushel of corn; twenty years later, they were receiving 10 cents a bushel, less than it cost to produce.³ An agrarian movement, the Farmers’ Alliance, began as an organization to increase the power of producers by negotiating with bulk buyers as a cooperative. The cooperative extended its role in the countryside by opening libraries and disseminating all sorts of radical (at the time) pamphlets on agrarian reform. Across the Midwest, the Farmers’ Alliance gained members. Its manifesto centered on curtailment of the power of the railroads, federal loans to aid farmers in debt, and currency reform that entailed reintroducing Hamilton’s old silver dollar alongside the gold dollar to ease monetary conditions, which would give debtors a chance to clear their loans. The Alliance also advocated for progressive issues such as the vote for women. Despite issuing platitudes, politicians, both Republican and Democrat, did very little to assuage the farmers’ concerns. But when the wheat and corn farmers of the Midwest and the cotton farmers of the South united, a new political force would emerge. With a speculator urban class in the Northeast becoming wealthy and a rural farming class in the South and the Midwest caught in the monetary brace of the Gold Standard, American democracy was ripe for change.

民粹主义者登场

Enter the Populists

金本位制是一种国际体系，它将所有主要货币与黄金挂钩，因此，世界某一地区的危机可能迅速波及其他地区。1892年，一场始于遥远的阿根廷一系列违约事件，最终导致英国最大的银行之一巴林银行破产的全球金融危机，对美国经济造成了严重冲击。而金本位制正是这场危机的传导机制。为了救助在阿根廷投资中损失数千万美元的巴林银行，英格兰银行需要黄金。它提高了英国的利率，导致黄金涌入伦敦，并从包括美国在内的世界其他地区流出。由此引发的美国信贷紧缩使失业率飙升至20%，全国各地企业纷纷倒闭。一个决心将美元从黄金束缚中解放出来的新政党——民粹党——开始动员起来，成为美国政坛的第三股力量。

The Gold Standard was an international system, which tied all major currencies to gold, and as a result, a crisis in one part of the world could affect another region rapidly. In 1892, a global financial crisis that began with a series of defaults in far-off Argentina and culminated with the bailing out of Barings, one of Britain’s largest banks, had severe repercussions for the American economy. The transmission mechanism was the Gold Standard. To bail out Barings, which had lost tens of millions on its investments in Argentina, the Bank of England needed gold. It raised British interest rates, causing gold to flow into London—and out of the rest of the world, including America. The resulting credit crunch in America pushed unemployment up to 20 percent and, with businesses failing all over the country, a new party, the Populist Party, which was determined to free the US dollar from the shackles of gold, began to mobilize as a third force in US politics.

为了维护货币信心，民主党总统格罗弗·克利夫兰听从银行家的建议，应对失业危机的方式不是把钱花在公共工程上，而是花钱购买黄金。他想向世界证明，美国依然是经济支柱。它维护自身的信誉，不会让储备下降到可能损害其对黄金承诺的水平。对于普通农民而言，全球金融危机及其应对措施让他们更加确信，一个精英金融集团将银行家的利益置于劳动者的利益之上^。4

Obsessed with maintaining confidence in the currency and advised by bankers, Grover Cleveland, the Democratic president, responded to the unemployment crisis not by spending dollars on public works, but by spending dollars buying up gold. He wanted to show the world that America was good for its credit and wouldn’t let its reserves fall to a level that might undermine its commitment to gold. For the average farmer, the global financial crisis and the reaction to it crystalized the idea that an elite financial cabal was putting the interests of bankers above the interests of the workingman.⁴

如果华盛顿不承认内陆地区正在发生的事情，那么内陆地区就会来到华盛顿。民粹主义政治家雅各布·考克西组织了一场进军首都的游行，被称为“穿靴子的请愿”或“考克西大军”。来自全国各地的失业者纷纷响应。1894年，美国历史上第一次大规模游行呼吁政府雇用失业人员建设公共基础设施，而公共财政赤字的资金来源则是从限制性的金本位制转向宽松的银本位制。四十年后，富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福总统正是推行了这项政策，但在1894年，民粹党的宣言被共和党人和大多数民主党人视为过于激进。然而，随着民粹党的支持率不断上升，民主党围绕金本位制的团结开始瓦解。他们看清了风向，身处政坛，自然不会放过任何机会。如果他们在动员民众方面无法与民粹主义者匹敌，他们就会加入民粹主义者的阵营，字面意义上的加入^。5

If Washington would not acknowledge what was happening in the hinterland, then the hinterland would come to Washington. A Populist politician, Jacob Coxey, organized a march on the capital, called the “petition in boots” or “Coxey’s Army.” Unemployed people from all over the country enlisted. In 1894, the first ever mass march in American history called on the government to hire unemployed men to build public infrastructure financed by a public deficit that would be enabled by a move from the restrictive Gold Standard to a looser silver standard. This would be precisely the policy followed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt forty years later, but in 1894 the Populist Party’s manifesto was considered impossibly radical by the Republicans and by most Democrats. As the Populists garnered increasing support, however, the Democratic Party’s unity around the Gold Standard began to erode. They could see which way the wind was blowing and weren’t in the business of politics to miss an opportunity. If they couldn’t match the Populists on the ground in terms of mobilization, they’d join them, literally.⁵

1896年民主党全国代表大会上，一片混乱。民主党人否决了他们当时的总统，选择了一位相对不知名的候选人威廉·詹宁斯·布莱恩作为他们的领袖。更激进的是，他们采取了放弃金本位制、转而采用金银混合货币的政策。布莱恩及其支持者呼吁美元可以兑换成白银，16盎司白银的价值相当于1盎司黄金——这一比例远低于当时的黄金与白银的比例。当时市场上的流通货币比例约为31比1。此举将使货币供应量一夜之间翻番。批评人士谴责该计划会引发严重的通货膨胀。

At the 1896 Democratic Convention all hell broke loose. The Democrats rejected their own sitting president, choosing a relatively unknown candidate, William Jennings Bryan, as their leader. More radically, they adopted the policy of jettisoning the Gold Standard in favor of a dollar backed by a combination of gold and silver. Bryan and his supporters called for the dollar to be convertible into silver, valuing 16 ounces of silver equivalent to 1 ounce of gold—a ratio far below the ratio then prevailing in the market, which was about 31 to 1. Such a move would have doubled the money supply overnight. Critics denounced the plan as wildly inflationary.

民粹党人如今面临两难境地，因为他们的标志性政策已被民主党人窃取。他们是会分裂激进派选票，还是会与民主党人联手，在即将到来的选举中对白宫发起双重冲击？民粹党人最终选择了结盟，并承诺向财阀统治宣战。民粹党的纲领包括援助农民、赋予妇女选举权、为普通工人减免所得税、监管铁路大亨，当然还有用于基础设施建设的公共财政赤字。然而，这些纲领只有在放松金本位制的前提下才能得以实施。

The Populists now faced a dilemma as their signature policy had been stolen by the Democrats. Would they split the radical vote or join forces with the Democrats and go for a dual assault on the White House in the upcoming election? The Populists opted for an alliance, promising a war on the plutocracy. The Populist program of aid for farmers, the vote for women, income tax cuts for ordinary workers, the regulation of railroad barons, and of course public deficits to build infrastructure, would only be workable if the monetary brace of gold was loosened.

尽管布莱恩与民粹党结盟，且口才出众，但他最终还是败给了共和党候选人威廉·麦金莱。美国民众反对金本位制的革命暂时告一段落。

Despite his alliance with the Populists and his soaring oratory, Bryan was defeated by the Republican candidate, William McKinley. The American popular revolution against gold was over, for now.

我们已经不在堪萨斯了。

We’re not in Kansas anymore

1896年夏天，在民粹党-民主党大败的几个月前，在距离华盛顿数千英里之外的地方，一位名叫肖·特拉（Shaaw Tláa）的几乎一贫如洗的原住民妇女，正与她的第二任丈夫乔治·卡马克（George Carmack）生活在一起。她的第一任丈夫和孩子都死于流感。她将改变美国一代人的金钱政治。在阿拉斯加育空河的一条支流里，这对夫妇靠捕捞鲑鱼勉强维持生计，同时期盼着能找到黄金。八月的一个清晨，肖·特拉看到水中闪闪发光的东西。到了第二年春天，克朗代克金矿首次发现的消息传到了加利福尼亚，不到一年，就有十万名淘金者涌入这片偏远地区，希望能一夜暴富。克朗代克金矿的发现，加上科罗拉多州和南非大量金矿的发现，在接下来的十年里，世界黄金供应量几乎翻了一番。

In the summer of 1896, a few months before the Populist-Democrat defeat, thousands of miles away from Washington, an almost destitute First Nations woman, Shaaw Tláa, who had lost her first husband and child to influenza, was living with her second husband, George Carmack. She would change the politics of money in the United States for a generation. In one of the many tributaries of the great Yukon River in Alaska, this couple eked out a precarious living fishing for salmon while hoping to find gold. One August morning, Shaaw Tláa saw something glittering in the water. By next spring, news of the first discovery of Klondike gold had made it to California and, before that year was out, 100,000 hopefuls had descended on this remote region hoping to strike it big. The Klondike, added to the discovery of vast seams of gold in Colorado and South Africa, almost doubled the world’s supply of gold over the following ten years.

民主党人实现货币宽松政策并非通过放弃金本位制，而是通过增加黄金供应，从而缓解了全球货币紧张局势。1897年至1914年间，随着美元增发，美国物价上涨了近50%。一位名叫肖·特拉（Shaaw Tláa，或更为人熟知的凯特·卡马克）的原住民女性的勇敢勘探最终终结了通货紧缩，她后来在1920年的西班牙流感大流行中不幸去世。

The Democrats got their monetary easing not by abandoning the Gold Standard but by the newly increased gold supply that allowed the global monetary brace to relax. Between 1897 and 1914, as more dollars were printed, prices in the US rose by nearly 50 percent. Deflation was slain by the intrepid prospecting of a First Nations woman, Shaaw Tláa, or Kate Carmack as she was better known, who would die in the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1920.

货币问题，以及美元应该与黄金还是白银挂钩，一直是美国经济和货币讨论的核心议题。与黄金挂钩被视为与共和党相关的金融和商业精英的优先事项，而倾向于将美元与白银挂钩，从而允许更多货币流通，则通常与民主党相关的工人阶级联系在一起。

The issue of money and whether the dollar should be tied to gold or silver remained a central part of American economic and monetary discourse. Attachment to gold was seen as a priority of the financial and business elite associated with the Republican Party, whereas a preference for tying the dollar to silver, thereby permitting more money to be in circulation, was often associated with the workingman, linked to the Democrats.

金本位制又维持了大约十年，但第一次世界大战暂时终结了它，而大萧条则彻底终结了它。战争需要资金，各国不会为了维持货币与黄金挂钩而阻碍战争进程、危及自身安全，从而损害自身的作战能力。战后的20世纪20年代，各国央行都在努力恢复金本位制，但全球政治、人口和经济现实已经发生了变化，货币政策也需要随之调整。约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯将金本位制斥为“野蛮的遗迹”，金本位制勉强维持了一段时间。在 1929 年股市崩盘后，该公司加剧了大萧条时期的信贷紧缩，造成了不必要的混乱，最终在 1936 年被罗斯福扫进了历史的垃圾堆。

The Gold Standard lasted for another decade or so, but the First World War put a temporary stop to it, while the Great Depression sealed its fate. The war required financing and countries were not going to hamper their war efforts and imperil their security by keeping their currencies—and thus their ability to fight—tied to gold. The years after the war, the 1920s, were characterized by central bankers’ efforts to get back to the Gold Standard, but the global political, demographic, and economic realities had changed, and the politics of money needed to reflect this. Dismissed by John Maynard Keynes as a “barbarous relic,” the Gold Standard limped on, wreaking needless havoc after the 1929 crash by exacerbating the credit crunch of the Great Depression, before eventually being consigned to history by Roosevelt in 1936.

如果说肖·特拉代表了一种美国女英雄形象，那么《绿野仙踪》中的多萝西则代表了另一种——来自美国腹地堪萨斯州的纯朴农家女孩。在1896年那场喧闹的民主党全国代表大会上，有一位名叫L·弗兰克·鲍姆的资深记者，他当时已从事过多种职业。和数百万美国人一样，鲍姆也被民粹主义者激进而团结的理念所吸引。经历过生意失败和各种与黄金相关的信贷危机后，鲍姆坚信金银复本位制，即以黄金和白银混合作为支撑的货币体系。威廉·詹宁斯·布莱恩的落败令鲍姆深感失望，于是他转而创作儿童文学作品，并创作了寓言故事《绿野仙踪》。

If Shaaw Tláa represents one type of American heroine, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz represents another, the wholesome farming girl from Kansas, the heart of the United States. In the crowd at that rumbustious Democratic Convention in 1896 was a journeyman journalist, L. Frank Baum, who had a number of careers behind him by that time. Like many millions of Americans, Baum was taken by the radical, unifying message of the Populists. Having experienced business failure and the various gold-related credit crunches, Baum was a true believer in bimetallism, a currency backed by a mix of both gold and silver. Bitterly disappointed by the defeat of William Jennings Bryan, Baum turned his hand to writing children’s books and penned an allegory, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

1937年，就在罗斯福总统让饱受经济衰退创伤的美国脱离金本位制一年后，沃尔特·迪士尼的首部动画长片《白雪公主和七个小矮人》的成功表明，将童话故事和儿童睡前故事改编成电影是可行的。大萧条时期的美国需要虚构的故事来慰藉心灵，米高梅电影公司买下了鲍姆这部儿童奇幻故事的改编权。在大银幕上，黄金的故事栩栩如生地呈现在观众面前。这部采用彩色胶片拍摄的电影，也成为了美国历史上最成功的电影之一。

In 1937, just a year after Roosevelt had taken a traumatized US off the Gold Standard, the success of Walt Disney’s first feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs showed that adapting fairy tales and children’s bedtime stories for the cinema could be successful. Depression America needed make-believe and MGM Studios bought the rights to Baum’s children’s fantasy. On the silver screen, the story of gold came alive. The first movie to be shot in Technicolor, it would become one of the most successful films ever produced in the US.

在接下来的几十年里，无数美国家庭每年圣诞节都会观看这部电影，跟着朱迪·加兰一起唱《飞跃彩虹》。有多少人知道他们唱的其实是金本位制和货币政治？

Over the following decades, countless American families watched the film each Christmas Day, singing along with Judy Garland to “Over the Rainbow.” How many knew they were singing about the Gold Standard and the politics of money?

这简直匪夷所思。

You couldn’t make it up.

股票经纪人

The stockbroker

1913年10月，詹姆斯·乔伊斯在的里雅斯特的圣乔瓦尼广场看到了朱塞佩·威尔第的雕像，广场距离熙熙攘攘的证券交易所仅几条街之遥。^乔伊斯是一位毕生热爱歌剧的歌剧爱好者，他本人也是一位才华横溢的男高音。前一天晚上，他刚刚欣赏了一场露天歌剧《阿依达》，以纪念这位作曲家诞辰一百周年。《阿依达》最初是伊斯梅尔·帕夏为庆祝苏伊士运河开通而委托创作的。这部歌剧以古埃及为背景——金字塔、神庙、狮身人面像以及法老时代的辉煌——于1871年在开罗首演，并获得了巨大的成功。

In October 1913, James Joyce observed the statue of Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste’s Piazza San Giovanni, located just a few streets away from the city’s bustling stock exchange.¹ Joyce, a lifelong opera buff and himself a talented tenor, had spent the previous evening at an open-air production of Aida to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. Aida had originally been commissioned by Ismail Pasha to mark the opening of the Suez Canal. Set against the backdrop of ancient Egypt—pyramids, temples, sphinxes, and the glory of the Pharaonic age—the opera premiered in Cairo in 1871 to enormous acclaim.

1863年，在达尔文因铁路股票崩盘而血本无归几年后，伊斯梅尔·帕夏被任命为埃及总督。伊斯梅尔决心实现国家现代化，他转向资本市场，为基础设施建设筹集资金，以期将这个古老的国家带入19世纪。他最杰出的成就便是修建苏伊士运河。这项大胆的计划，开凿了一条横​​贯欧洲大陆的通道，连接了东西埃及。地中海与红海的连通，从而连接了欧洲和亚洲，大大缩短了前往印度、中国和印度尼西亚的航程时间。苏伊士运河的建成，既是工程奇迹，也是金融奇迹。如果没有金融领域的创新，尤其是股票市场作为大型项目融资方式的普及，运河的构想或许根本不会出现，更遑论实现。向成千上万的投资者发行股票降低了任何一家公司的风险，同时也为该项目乃至后续项目吸引了新的投资者。金融工程与机械工程一样，共同开启了世界的大门。

In 1863, a few years after Darwin lost his shirt in collapsing railway shares, Ismail Pasha was appointed khedive of Egypt. Determined to modernize the country, Ismail turned to the capital markets to finance infrastructure that would drag the ancient nation into the nineteenth century. His outstanding success was the construction of the Suez Canal. This audacious scheme, cutting a large passage through the continent to link the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and thus Europe to Asia, slashed the journey times to India, China, and Indonesia. The Suez Canal was as much a feat of finance as it was engineering. Without innovations in money, most specifically the popularity of stock markets as a way of financing megaprojects, it is unlikely that the idea of the canal would ever have been entertained, let alone realized. Issuing stocks to thousands of investors reduced the risk for any one company, while at the same time enlisting a new investor base into the project and, in turn, further projects. Financial engineering as much as mechanical engineering opened up the world.

苏伊士运河的建设资金完全来自私人资本，由一家在法国注册的公司筹集，其财务结构本质上是一种股权互换。该公司通过出售股份从投资者那里筹集资金，并将部分资金与埃及政府进行互换，以换取运河的运营权以及从中获得运营收入和费用的权利。埃及政府控制了该公司44%的股份，而该公司保留了56%的股份。该公司承担了这项工程的风险和财务风险，并通过向使用运河的船舶收取费用来收回投资。尽管运河名义上仍属于埃及，但该公司受法国公司法管辖，总部设在巴黎。来自欧洲各地的股东纷纷涌入苏伊士运河的首次公开募股，这引起了公众的广泛关注。

Funded entirely by private capital, raised by a French registered company, the financial structure behind the canal was essentially a swap. The company raised money from investors through selling shares, and some of this money was swapped with the Egyptian government for the right to operate the canal and acquire revenues and fees from the operation. Egypt took control of 44 percent of the company’s shares, while the company retained 56 percent. The company shouldered the risk and the financial perils of this endeavor, recouping its investment through charging ships a fee to use the canal. Although the canal remained officially Egyptian, the company was governed by French company law and based in Paris. Shareholders from all over Europe piled into the initial Suez share offering, which caught the public imagination.

的里雅斯特是乔伊斯的第二故乡，也是苏伊士运河融资的核心城市。早在1858年，一位来自该市的白手起家的企业家帕斯夸莱·雷沃泰拉就曾前往巴黎，争取让的里雅斯特的富人们出资参与该项目。为了表彰他的贡献，雷沃泰拉被任命为苏伊士运河通用公司的副总裁。1861年，他启程前往埃及考察运河工地。他继续支持该项目，并于1864年发表了一篇题为《奥地利参与世界贸易》的文章，描述了的里雅斯特在欧洲与世界其他地区经济关系网络中的关键作用。

Trieste, Joyce’s adopted home, was central to the financing of the Suez Canal. Back in 1858, a self-made entrepreneur from the city, Pasquale Revoltella, had traveled to Paris to offer finance from wealthy Triestians to participate in the project. In acknowledgment of his contribution, Revoltella was nominated vice president of the Universal Company of the Suez Canal, and in 1861 he set out on a long journey to Egypt to visit the site. He continued to work in support of the project and in 1864 he published an essay titled “The Co-participation of Austria in World Trade,” describing Trieste’s pivotal role in the network of economic relationships between Europe and the rest of the world.

雷沃尔泰拉是众多精力充沛的商人的典型代表，正是他们缔造了这座繁荣的新城。他出身屠夫家庭，一路攀升，最终于1867年被封为男爵。的里雅斯特是一座商业城市，是奥匈帝国唯一的港口，也是欧洲发展最快、最具国际化和最活跃的商业中心之一。如果说19世纪末欧洲有一座金融中心，那非的里雅斯特莫属——考虑到当时其他地方正在发生的巨大金融创新，这番评价可谓相当高。从1880年到1910年的三十年间，全球一半的证券交易所相继成立。各大城市竞相建造自己的证券交易所，这些建筑通常采用新古典主义风格，拥有高耸的柱廊、山墙和通往这些现代金融殿堂的宏伟阶梯。在乔伊斯的里雅斯特，证券交易所大楼建于 1804 年，尽管证券交易所直到 1894 年才被设立为自治机构。大楼装饰着多立克柱，顶部矗立着罗马财神墨丘利的雕像。

Revoltella was a typical example of the energetic merchants who built this thriving new city. The son of a butcher, he ascended through the ranks of Austrian society and was eventually made a baron in 1867. Trieste was a commercial city, the only port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and one of Europe’s fastest-growing, most cosmopolitan, and most lively mercantile centers. If there was a European city of money in the late nineteenth century, Trieste was it—which is quite a claim given the enormous financial innovation that was taking place elsewhere. In the thirty years from 1880 to 1910, half of the world’s stock exchanges were set up. Cities rushed to build their own stock exchange, often constructed in neoclassical style, with columns, pediments, and grand staircases leading up to these modern-day temples of finance. In Joyce’s Trieste, the stock exchange building—which had been built in 1804, though the stock exchange was only instituted as a self-governing body in 1894—was adorned with Doric columns and crowned with a statue of the Roman god Mercury, the god of money.

交易所周围常常兴建新的商业区，拥有宽阔的大道和广场，这些区域的房地产往往是全城最昂贵的。在交易所内部，一种新的职业——股票经纪人——开始为不断壮大的商人阶层买卖各种股票和债券。在世界各地，铁路、水坝、桥梁和运河等工程项目成为人们首选的投资项目。新兴中产阶级。对于寻求投资的项目而言，股票和债券市场具有变革性意义，因为原本无法或不愿由单个个人或公司承担的投资，现在可以提供给众多投资者，从而分散风险。

New districts were often built around the bourse, with fine avenues and squares, and these areas often had the most expensive real estate in the city. Inside the exchanges themselves, a new creature, the stockbroker, bought and sold a range of stocks and bonds from and to the expanding merchant class. All over the world, engineering projects—railroads, dams, bridges, and canals—became the investment of choice for the new middle classes. For projects looking for investment, stock and bond markets were transformative, because investments that couldn’t or wouldn’t be taken on by one individual or company could be offered to many investors, spreading the risk.

在这些年里，我们见证了一种新型杂志——商业报纸的兴起。全球金融市场产生了海量的新闻、数据和分析。《经济学人》创刊于19世纪40年代，刊登了一份长达五十页的股票和债券价格清单，字迹密密麻麻。随着储户们试图理解决定股价走势的各种因素，并解读数学符号以理解这些数字的意义，^新闻报道也变得越来越注重质量。金融热潮席卷而来。国际资本主义的克星卡尔·马克思，曾多年在财经报纸《纽约每日论坛报》工作，一边从商业收益中牟利^，一边在《资本论》中对金融业进行猛烈抨击。

During these years we see the emergence of a new type of magazine, the business paper. Global financial markets were generating huge amounts of news, data, and analysis. The Economist, set up in the 1840s, published a list of stock and bond prices which ran to fifty pages of small print.² Journalism was becoming increasingly qualitative as savers tried to understand the forces that determine share price movements and to decipher mathematical shorthand to make some sense of the numbers. The finance bug was infectious. Karl Marx, the scourge of international capitalism, worked for many years for a financial newspaper, the New York Daily Tribune, lining his pockets with the proceeds of commerce while he excoriated finance in Das Kapital.³

熔炉

Melting pot

苏伊士运河的开通重塑了世界商业和海运格局，并引发了一系列区域性变革。例如，从欧洲到印度的航程缩短了5000英里，耗时约10天。苏伊士运河深刻地改变了欧洲传统的航道。亚得里亚海成为新的大西洋，是货物和人员从欧洲前往亚洲及其他地区的首选航道。其中一位明显的受益者是的里雅斯特，这座坐落在亚得里亚海沿岸拐角处的城市，一跃成为欧洲最具活力的港口城市之一。运河开通后，的里雅斯特港的吞吐量从 1870 年的 960,103 吨飙升至 1890 年的 2,158,524 吨，到 1913 年更是超过 500 万吨。它将成为中欧通往世界的窗口。

The opening of the Suez Canal redrew the commercial and maritime map of the world and triggered a series of region-shifting developments. The journey to India from Europe, for instance, was cut by 5,000 miles and around ten days. Suez profoundly altered Europe’s traditional navigation routes. The Adriatic became the new Atlantic, the channel of choice for goods and people traveling from Europe to Asia and beyond. One clear winner was Trieste, which, nestled in the crook of the Adriatic coast, became one of Europe’s most dynamic port cities. Following the opening of the canal, tonnage handled by Trieste’s port rocketed from 960,103 tons in 1870, to 2,158,524 in 1890, to more than 5 million tons by 1913. It would become Mitteleuropa’s window to the world.

这座繁华多元的城市是金钱的产物。它曾是一个偏僻的省会城市，被其辉煌的邻居威尼斯的光芒所掩盖，后来却发展成为欧洲大陆的商业中心。著名的奥地利南方铁路（Südbahn）将的里雅斯特与维也纳以及帝国腹地连接起来。信奉天主教的奥地利君主制意识到民族主义对其多民族帝国构成威胁，因此在十八世纪颁布了《宽容专利》和《宽容法令》，允许东正教徒和犹太人在整个帝国范围内公开交往和贸易，为雄心勃勃的移民前往的里雅斯特碰碰运气铺平了道路。到了十九世纪末，这种对宗教自由的态度使得的里雅斯特成为了名副其实的民族熔炉，意大利人、奥地利人、斯洛文尼亚人、捷克人、克罗地亚人、波兰人、亚美尼亚人和塞尔维亚人在此汇聚。到二十世纪初，的里雅斯特除了拥有庞大的天主教、犹太教、希腊东正教和塞尔维亚东正教社群外，还聚集了路德教、卫理公会、瑞士和瓦尔德斯新教、圣公会以及亚美尼亚梅奇塔里派的教堂。其方言的里雅斯特语吸收了亚美尼亚语、英语、西班牙语、西西里语、土耳其语、马耳他语、德语、匈牙利语、克罗地亚语、意第绪语、捷克语和希腊语的成分。^马克思将的里雅斯特相对于威尼斯的衰落的成功归功于其新的国际化：

This bustling, diverse city was a product of money. Once a provincial backwater, overshadowed by its illustrious neighbor, Venice, it became a center for continental commerce. The famous Austrian Südbahn (Southern Railway) connected Trieste to Vienna and the imperial hinterland. The Catholic Austrian monarchy, understanding that nationalism was a threat to its multinational empire, had passed the Patent of Toleration and the Edict of Tolerance in the eighteenth century, which allowed Orthodox Christians and Jews to fraternize and trade openly throughout the empire, paving the way for ambitious migrants to try their luck in Trieste. By the late nineteenth century this attitude to religious freedom meant that Trieste was a veritable melting pot of Italians, Austrians, Slovenes, Czechs, Croats, Poles, Armenians, and Serbs. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it hosted the churches of Lutherans, Methodists, Swiss and Valdesian Protestants, Anglicans, and Armenian Mechitarists in addition to large Catholic, Jewish, Greek, and Serbian Orthodox communities. Its dialect, Triestino, absorbed bits of Armenian, English, Spanish, Sicilian, Turkish, Maltese, German, Hungarian, Croatian, Yiddish, Czech, and Greek.⁴ Marx ascribed Trieste’s success relative to Venice’s demise to its new cosmopolitanism:

那么，为什么的里雅斯特而非威尼斯，成为了亚得里亚海航海复兴的摇篮呢？威尼斯是一座充满回忆的城市；而的里雅斯特则和美国一样，拥有着完全没有历史的特权。的里雅斯特是由一群形形色色的意大利、德国、英国、法国、希腊、亚美尼亚和犹太商人建立的——对于冒险家来说，它不像泻湖之城那样受传统束缚^。5

How, then, came it to pass that Trieste, and not Venice, became the cradle of revived navigation in the Adriatic? Venice was a town of reminiscences; Trieste shared the privilege of the United States of having no past at all. Formed by a motley crew of Italian, German, English, French, Greek, Armenian and Jewish merchant-adventurers, it was not fettered by traditions like the City of the Lagunes.⁵

金钱促成了这种国际化，而这座资产阶级贸易城市的中心人物正是港口商人，他是世纪之交版的达蒂尼（中世纪商人）。商业城市不仅吸引商人和经纪人，也吸引艺术家、作家和思想家。1905年，詹姆斯·乔伊斯从沉闷的都柏林来到这里。（在的里雅斯特期间，乔伊斯从事过许多工作，其中一项是在雷沃尔泰拉商业学院教授英语和商务函授，该学院由帕斯夸莱·雷沃尔泰拉创办，乔伊斯称之为“左轮手枪大学”。）

Money enabled this cosmopolitanism and at the center of this bourgeois trading city was the figure of the port-merchant, a turn of the century version of medieval Datini. Commercial cities don’t only attract traders and brokers; they attract artists, writers, and thinkers too. It was here that James Joyce arrived from dreary Dublin in 1905. (In one of the many jobs he took during his time in Trieste, Joyce would teach English and business correspondence at the Revoltella School of Commerce, founded by the same Pasquale Revoltella, which Joyce referred to as the “revolver university.”)

1913年秋天，乔伊斯一边欣赏威尔第的歌剧，一边努力出版自己的作品。多年来，他一直在四处推销《青年艺术家画像》和《都柏林人》，并且开始着手创作他的巨著《尤利西斯》。这位流亡的爱尔兰人似乎迎来了转机。他刚刚受邀在的里雅斯特著名的密涅瓦学会图书馆发表一场关于《哈姆雷特》的有偿讲座。密涅瓦学会图书馆以罗马神话中掌管诗歌和贸易等诸多领域的女神密涅瓦命名。谁说艺术与商业不能兼得呢？

As he watched Verdi’s opera in the autumn of 1913, Joyce was trying to get his books published. He’d been hawking A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners around for years, and he was beginning to put together the spine of his masterpiece Ulysses. Things were starting to look up for the exiled Irishman. He had just been commissioned to give a paid lecture on Hamlet in Trieste’s prestigious Società di Minerva library, named after the multitasking Roman goddess of, among other things, poetry and trade. Who said art and commerce don’t go together?

12月15日，埃兹拉·庞德寄来了一封信。庞德是一位经验丰富的星探，他在信中告诉乔伊斯，他应该感到震惊。庞德深知艺术家在通往伟大的道路上，有时需要鼓励，因此他告诉这位正处于低谷的乔伊斯，他一直在与同为爱尔兰人的文学巨匠威廉·巴特勒·叶芝交谈。叶芝和庞德联手说服了美国现代主义文学杂志《自我主义者》（The Egoist）刊登乔伊斯的一些作品，更重要的是，还支付了稿酬。经历了令人沮丧的几年之后，乔伊斯终于迎来了转机。在欧洲艺术文化蓬勃发展的时期，詹姆斯·乔伊斯却被文坛精英及其权威人士冷落，他需要喘息之机。受到鼓舞后，他匆忙重写了《青年艺术家画像》和《都柏林人》的开头几章，并用火车将它们寄给了身在伦敦的庞德。几个月后，这两本书都出版了。一颗新星冉冉升起，他的伟大作品也由此诞生。这部以都柏林为背景，深受多元文化、商业气息浓厚的的里雅斯特影响的作品，塑造了一个仿佛从这座亚得里亚海沿岸大熔炉的街头走出来的主人公。

On December 15, a letter arrived from Ezra Pound. An inveterate talent spotter, Pound informed Joyce that his ears should be burning. Understanding that the artist needs encouragement on the sometimes impassable road to greatness, Pound informed the faltering Joyce that he had been talking to fellow Irishman and literary heavyweight W. B. Yeats. Together Yeats and Pound had convinced a modernist American literary magazine, The Egoist, to take some of Joyce’s work and, more to the point, to pay him for the pleasure. Following frustrating years in the wilderness, ignored by the literati and their gatekeepers at a time when the European artistic and cultural scene was at its most expressive, James Joyce needed a break. Spurred on, he hurriedly redrafted the opening chapters of both Portrait and Dubliners and sent them by train to Pound in London. Within months, both books would be published. A star was born and the decks were cleared for his great work, a book about Dublin that was heavily influenced by multicultural, commercially savvy Trieste, featuring a protagonist who could easily have stepped off the streets of this melting pot on the Adriatic.

熊彼特式的进步

Schumpeterian progress

和许多欧洲人一样，乔伊斯在1913年底心情乐观，对未来一年充满信心。欧洲正经历着商业繁荣。自本世纪初以来，欧洲工业生产翻了一番，庞大的资本市场为无数投资项目提供了资金。越来越多的人参与到这场伟大的商业冒险中，一张为跨境贸易提供资金的货币网络，以前所未有的方式将不同国家的公民和臣民联系在一起。从商业角度来看，一切似乎只会越来越好。

Like many Europeans, Joyce ended 1913 in an optimistic mood, looking forward with confidence to the year ahead. Europe was experiencing a commercial boom. European industrial production had doubled since the beginning of the century, and a myriad of investments were being financed by deep capital markets. More and more people were participating in the great adventure that is commerce, and a monetary web, financing cross-border trade, linked citizens and subjects of diverse countries as never before. Commercially, it looked like things could only get better.

与此同时，欧洲的作家、艺术家和思想家们正在突破界限，拥抱一场新的运动——现代主义。现代主义运动不再满足于模仿过去，而是致力于探索看待、实践和思考一切事物的全新方式。摆脱了十九世纪道德的束缚，新世纪迸发出勃勃生机。一切皆有可能。整个欧洲大陆的思想家和艺术家们……创造、想象、尝试新事物。在数学领域，爱因斯坦致力于他的统一相对论，而毕加索则将立体主义带给了世界。弗洛伊德，这位梦想编织者，一边密切关注着身在苏黎世的竞争对手荣格，一边成为新兴的精神分析领域的领军人物。未来在召唤。

Meanwhile, European writers, artists, and thinkers were pushing boundaries, embracing a new movement, modernism. No longer content to ape what went before, the modernist movement was all about new ways of looking, doing, and thinking about everything. Following the heavy hand of nineteenth-century morality, the new century burst with vibrancy. Nothing was off-limits. All over the continent, thinkers and artists were creating, imagining, and experimenting with the new. In mathematics, Einstein was working on his unified theory of relativity, while Picasso introduced the world to Cubism. Freud the dreamweaver, all the while keeping an eye on his rival Jung in Zürich, was the go-to man for the radical new field of psychoanalysis. The future beckoned.

奥地利首都维也纳是这场运动的中心。自信、富裕、快速扩张，吸引着雄心勃勃的移民，这座城市充满活力，前景无限。弗洛伊德、埃贡·席勒、古斯塔夫·克里姆特和路德维希·维特根斯坦都出生于此，维也纳是文化和思想的中心。无论政治、社会还是经济，任何风云变幻的事件都发生在维也纳。我们在任何充满活力的城市都能看到商业自我表达与艺术自我表达的结合。在中世纪的佛罗伦萨，我们看到了商业银行和文艺复兴艺术的交融；在十七世纪的阿姆斯特丹，荷兰大师的艺术与荷兰商业的黄金时代密不可分。艺术创新和商业创新都是熊彼特著名的“创造性破坏之风”的例证：新的艺术形式取代旧的艺术形式，正如新的商业产品取代旧的商业产品一样，为我们所谓的进步铺平了道路。而这一过程的引擎，正是人类求知欲。

The capital of Austria was the fulcrum of this movement. Confident, wealthy, and expanding rapidly, absorbing ambitious immigrants, Vienna fizzed with promise. Home to Freud, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the city was cultural and intellectual ground zero. If it was happening, it was happening in Vienna—politically, socially, and financially. We see this pairing of commercial self-expression and artistic self-expression wherever we have vibrant cities. In medieval Florence, we had merchant banking and Renaissance art; in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the Dutch masters and the golden age of Dutch commerce were intertwined. Innovation in art and innovation in commerce are both examples of Schumpeter’s famous “gales of creative destruction”: new art forms replace the old in the same way as new commercial products replace old ones, paving the road to what we call progress. The engine of this process is the inquiring human mind.

哲学家维特根斯坦通过与剑桥思想家伯特兰·罗素的共同友谊，对经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯产生了深远的影响。这些思想巨匠彼此交融，思想在维也纳和伦敦之间快速传播。1915年，身处前线保卫祖国奥地利的维特根斯坦设法给身在伦敦的凯恩斯写了一封信。凯恩斯回信祝愿这位年轻的维也纳知识分子一切顺利，并希望他能“安全获救”，而他也确实如此。他们之间的联系如此紧密。1918年，二战刚结束不久，凯恩斯就安排人帮助当时身处意大利战俘营的奥地利战俘维特根斯坦与罗素自由通信，尽管维特根斯坦是敌方战斗人员。维特根斯坦、罗素和凯恩斯保持着密切的友谊，三人的思想相互交融，最终汇聚成一锅现代主义的汤羹，涵盖经济学、哲学、理性主义、伦理学、政治理论以及关于货币本质的思考。凯恩斯作为最伟大的现代主义思想家，其对经济学的贡献堪比乔伊斯对文学的贡献。他摒弃了古典经济学的思想束缚——自由放任、金本位制以及自由市场至上——彻底改变了我们对货币的理解，包括货币的运作方式以及国家如何利用货币来实现社会目标。

Wittgenstein, the philosopher, exerted a significant influence on John Maynard Keynes, the economist, through their mutual friendship with the Cambridge thinker Bertrand Russell. These intellectual giants cross-pollinated each other as ideas whizzed from Vienna to London. In 1915, Wittgenstein, who was on the front line fighting for his native Austria, managed to get a letter to Keynes in London. Keynes responded by wishing the young Viennese intellectual all the best and hoping he would be “safely captured,” which indeed he was. So close were these men that in 1918, just after the war, Keynes organized for Wittgenstein, then an Austrian POW languishing in an Italian camp, to be allowed to correspond freely with Russell, despite being an enemy combatant. Wittgenstein, Russell, and Keynes remained close friends, each man’s ideas fertilizing the others, in a modernist brew of economics, philosophy, rationalism, ethics, political theory, and ideas about the nature of money. Keynes, the greatest modernist thinker, would do for economics what Joyce would do for literature. Rejecting classical economics with its intellectual straightjacket of laissez-faire, the Gold Standard, and the primacy of free markets, Keynes revolutionized our understanding of money, how it worked and how it could be manipulated by the State to achieve social objectives.

在凯恩斯看来，货币是现代国家武器库的一部分，而货币稳定的来源是国家政治权威的公众合法性。国家决定接受何种物质——无论是黄金、白银还是纸币——作为其货币形式。凯恩斯得出结论，经济史是征服与反征服的结果，经济学最终并非如古典经济学所主张的那样，是对不可动摇的自然规律进行客观的科学研究，而是一系列关于人类政治安排的主观观察。根据凯恩斯的观点，经济学是对人类构想的系统的研究，其核心在于人类如何在这些系统中行事。

For Keynes, money was part of the armory of the modern state and the source of monetary stability was the public legitimacy of the state’s political authority. The state decided what substance—be it gold, silver, or paper—it would accept as its form of money. Keynes concluded that economic history was the result of conquest and counterconquest, and ultimately economics was not some objective scientific investigation into the unshakable laws of nature—as espoused by classical economics—but it was a set of subjective observations about human political arrangements. Economics, according to Keynes, was the study of systems conceived by humans and it centered on how humans behave within these systems.

二十世纪初，科学突破、资金的获取、大规模人口迁移以及电力等新技术的结合，激发了创造力，带来了一股巨大的力量，这与爱因斯坦当时正在研究的核能颇为相似。从坦克到晶体管，各种各样的产品层出不穷：在世纪之初，我们看到了茶包、速溶咖啡、空调等。玉米片、胸罩、吸尘器和彩色摄影术相继被发明并投入商业应用。这股创造性破坏的狂风呼啸而过，经济也随之蓬勃发展。一项创新引发了另一项创新，如此循环往复。海因里希·赫兹发现的电磁波为雷达、无线电广播以及后来的电视奠定了基础。在农业领域，我们见证了第一批拖拉机和合成肥料的出现，作物产量显著提高。内燃机、电动机和现代自动扶梯也相继问世。莱特兄弟获得了世界上第一架商业化生产的“飞行器”的专利。航空时代就此拉开帷幕。

In the early years of the twentieth century, the combination of scientific breakthroughs, access to money, mass migration, and new technologies like electricity generated a creative frisson, an immense power, not unlike the nuclear energy that Einstein was exploring at the time. All kinds of products from tanks to transistors were being invented: in the opening years of the century, we see tea bags, instant coffee, air conditioning, cornflakes, the bra, vacuum cleaners, and color photography all being invented and commercialized. Those gales of creative destruction howled and the economy surged. One innovation triggered another, and so on. Electromagnetic waves, discovered by Heinrich Hertz, would set the stage for radar, radio broadcasts, and, later, television. In farming we saw the first tractors and synthetic fertilizers, pushing up yields. Combustion engines, electrical motors, and the modern escalator were all unveiled. The Wright brothers secured their patent for the world’s first commercially produced “flying machine.” The age of aviation was just beginning.

专利，作为创新成果的法律保护伞，是商业活力迸发的最佳指标。德国每年新授予的专利数量从1900年的8784件增加到1913年的13520件，增幅约为50%；而德国、法国和英国每年授予的专利总数从1905年的34893件增加到1913年的46086件，增幅约为三分之一。欧洲经济正以惊人的速度发展。在美国，变革的步伐甚至更快：每年的专利申请数量从1900年的39673件飙升至1913年的68117件^。

The perfect indicators of this outpouring in commercial energy are patents, the legal protectors of innovation. The number of new patents granted per year in Germany increased from 8,784 in 1900 to 13,520 in 1913, an increase of around 50 percent, while the total number of annual patents granted in Germany, France, and Britain increased from 34,893 in 1905 to 46,086 by 1913—an increase of around a third. The economy in Europe was evolving at an extraordinary rate. In the US, the pace of change was even faster: the number of patents applied for per year soared from 39,673 in 1900 to 68,117 by 1913.⁶

在战前几年，的里雅斯特充满了各种想法和资金。长达四十年的经济扩张带来的乐观情绪让投资者信心倍增，进而推动了创新和冒险精神的蓬勃发展。艺术和商业领域的现代主义齐头并进。还有谁比后来成为现代主义领军人物的詹姆斯·乔伊斯本人更适合将艺术和商业这两种冲动融合在一起呢？而还有什么比在当时最新、最现代的艺术形式——电影——中探索他的商业才能更合适的呢？

In the years preceding the war, Trieste was awash with ideas and money. The optimism of forty years of economic expansion made investors confident, leading to a boom in innovation and risk-taking. Modernism in art and modernism in commerce moved simultaneously. Who better to blend the two impulses, the artistic one and the entrepreneurial one, than the man who would become the leading light of modernism, James Joyce himself? And where better to explore his entrepreneurial side than in the newest—most modern—art form of the day: the cinema?

艺术家作为企业家的画像

A portrait of the artist as entrepreneur

1905年，乔伊斯抵达的里雅斯特，那一年，该市第一家永久性电影院开业。到1909年，电影院数量已增至21家，这座港口城市也成为了奥匈帝国重要的电影发行中心。正如今天一样，当一个城市或地区出现新的科技中心时，投机性金融活动也会随之而来。乔伊斯的妹妹伊娃那年从都柏林来访，她提到，的里雅斯特有这么多电影院，而规模大得多的都柏林却一家也没有，这让她觉得很奇怪。乔伊斯本人也是一位电影爱好者，他看到了商机：他要开一家爱尔兰第一家电影院，从中^发家致富。他需要找到投资人，幸运的是，的里雅斯特是这位年轻企业家筹集资金的理想之地。乔伊斯很快找到了一群潜在的投资人，他们曾在布加勒斯特经营一家名为“伏尔塔”（Volta）的电影院并取得了成功。

Back in 1905, the year Joyce arrived there, the first permanent cinema opened in Trieste. By 1909, there were twenty-one cinemas and the port city had become a major film distribution hub for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As is the case today, when a new technology hub emerges in a city or region, so too does speculative finance. Eva, Joyce’s sister, who was visiting from Dublin that year, mentioned she thought it odd that Trieste had so many cinemas yet there wasn’t one in Dublin, a far bigger city.⁷ Joyce, himself a film enthusiast, saw his opportunity: he’d open the first cinema in Ireland and make his fortune. He had to find backers and, luckily for our young entrepreneur, Trieste was an ideal spot to raise money. Joyce quickly found a syndicate of potential financiers who had achieved success with a cinema called the Volta in Bucharest.

在关键的电梯演讲中，乔伊斯以一句开场白吊足了投资者的胃口：都柏林这座欧洲大城市竟然没有电影院，而同属爱尔兰的另外两座城市科克和贝尔法斯特也同样如此。爱尔兰拥有近百万城市居民，对于有远见的经营者而言，这片处女地般的市场正等待着他们去开拓。乔伊斯花钱大手大脚，但他谈判达成的合同却展现了他精明的理财能力。他成功说服合伙人将10%的股权和利润分给他，而他自己却分文未出。詹姆斯·乔伊斯正式开启了他的事业。握手成交，交易完成，乔伊斯启程了。8^一位年轻企业家的艺术家画像。

At the critical elevator pitch, Joyce whetted investors’ appetites with his opening gambit: Dublin, a large European city, had no cinema and two more cities in the same country, Cork and Belfast, were also without a cinema. Ireland, with close to a million urban dwellers, was virgin trading soil ripe for far-sighted operators. For a man who was a better spender than saver, the contract Joyce negotiated reveals a canny financial operator. He convinced his partners to give him 10 percent of the equity and profits, although he didn’t invest a penny himself. James Joyce was now in business. Hands were shaken, the deal was done, Joyce was off.⁸ A portrait of the artist as a young entrepreneur.

为什么我们仍然难以接受艺术家和企业家这两种角色并非互斥？商业与艺术向来密不可分，然而，在乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》问世一百多年后，我们仍然难以接受这一点。一种新型小说——贫穷的创作者与缺乏灵感的商人、才华横溢的波西米亚人与乏味的资产阶级之间的对比——依然具有强大的感染力。然而，创作《尤利西斯》的乔伊斯，同时也是爱尔兰第一家电影院的创办者。当乔伊斯在爱尔兰为一台放映机讨价还价时，他正努力出版《都柏林人》，给诺拉写那些臭名昭著的露骨信件，并在玛丽街漫步，构思着《尤利西斯》的情节和人物，比如布莱兹·博伊兰、巴克·穆里根以及莫莉和利奥波德·布卢姆夫妇。

Why do we still find it hard to accept that these two roles—the artist and the entrepreneur—are not mutually exclusive? Commerce and art have always gone hand in hand, yet over a hundred years after Joyce’s Ulysses introduced the world to a new sort of novel, the lazy idea of the indigent creative set against the uninspired businessperson, the ingenious bohemian versus the tedious bourgeois, remains as powerful as ever. But the mind that wrote Ulysses was also the mind that opened Ireland’s first cinema. While Joyce was haggling over the price of a projector back in Ireland, he was trying to get Dubliners published, writing those infamously explicit letters to Nora, and walking around Mary Street, imagining the plot of Ulysses and its characters, Blazes Boylan, Buck Mulligan, and Molly and Leopold Bloom.

如果一切顺利，乔伊斯将获得丰厚的利润。他马不停蹄地投入到工作中，与房东谈判房产条款，与油漆工和装饰工商讨设计方案，与发行商挑选影片，与报社广告商洽谈宣传事宜，讨好记者以获得好评，并精通从座椅和室内装潢到灯光和放映机技术操作等诸多领域。他还了解了电影的定价结构——午场票价低，晚场重头戏票价高。这位常年破产的乔伊斯，却展现出了卓越的现金流管理能力。至于宣传，这方面他可谓天赋异禀。乔伊斯成功地制造了足够的轰动效应，使1909年12月20日沃尔塔电影院的盛大开业成为一场不容错过的盛事。

With a material upside if things worked out, Joyce went about his business with freneticism, negotiating property terms with landlords, discussing design with painters and decorators, selecting films with distributors, talking to newspaper admen about publicity, buttering up journalists for flattering reviews, becoming expert in many fields from seating and upholstery to lights and technical projector operation. He learned about pricing structures for shows—cheaper for matinees, more expensive for the evening headliner. Joyce, the perennial bankrupt, proved to be a dab hand at cash flow management. In terms of publicity, something he took to naturally, Joyce generated enough hype to ram the first night, making the grand opening of the Volta cinema on December 20, 1909, a must-see event.

在都柏林，任何新创企业都可能遭遇半个城市的欢呼，预示着它即将失败，尤其是如果你是功成名就的本地人，回到家乡后，更会显得那些留在原地的人毫无作为。有多少同行在读到《晚间电讯报》对Volta的评论时，会气得往啤酒里吐口水？

Any new venture in Dublin can count on half the city cheerleading your impending failure, particularly if you’re a returned local made good, showing up the inactivity of the left-behinds. How many peers must have spat into their pints when they read the Evening Telegraph’s review of the Volta?

非常出色……设施齐全……宾客众多……不惜一切代价……尤其成功……优秀的弦乐团……乔伊斯先生显然不知疲倦地工作，他理应为取得的成功表示祝贺…… ⁹

Remarkably good … Admirably equipped … Large numbers of guests … No expense spared … Particularly successful … Excellent string orchestra … Mr. Joyce has worked apparently indefatigably and deserves to be congratulated on the success … ⁹

1910 年 1 月，乔伊斯创立了该品牌后，返回的里雅斯特，留下一位经理负责在爱尔兰的业务。

In January 1910, having established the brand, Joyce headed back to Trieste, leaving a manager to run the show in Ireland.

艺术家乔伊斯同时也是企业家，这并不令人惊讶。艺术家和企业家往往拥有相似的视角；创作艺术的人也擅长创办企业。有时，艺术家们看不到这种相似之处，他们被灌输了一种错误的观念：金钱是邪恶的，贫穷才是高尚的；艺术家自由奔放、富有表现力，而商人则枯燥保守。事实上，艺术家和企业家都能在别人眼中是局限的地方看到可能性，将以前无法想象的事物变为现实。艺术家和企业家都身处险境，在充满风险的公众舞台上表演。无论是企业家还是艺术家，他们都有着强烈的个人观点，并且有足够的勇气去承受大众的嘲笑，让自己的观点被听到。成功只能在付出努力之后才能到来，这使得他们的整个人生本质上都充满不确定性。对于企业家和艺术家来说，失败可能是残酷的，而成功往往是未来失望的前兆。但他们都受到自我表达的驱动；这已经融入了这些独立、有时不讲道理、常常难以相处的人的基因之中。艺术家和企业家如果被老板、工资或保险费束缚，都可能窒息。

It should not surprise us that Joyce the artist was also Joyce the entrepreneur. Artists and entrepreneurs are blessed with similar outlooks; the type of minds that make art are also the type that create businesses. Sometimes artists don’t see this similarity, schooled in an erroneous worldview that money is bad and poverty is noble, the artist expressive and free but the businessperson boring and conservative. In fact, both artist and entrepreneur see possibilities where others see limitations, bringing the previously unimagined into being. Both artist and entrepreneur have skin in the game, performing on the public stage of jeopardy. The creative—businessperson or artist—has strong opinions and is courageous enough to risk the ridicule of the crowd for their opinions to be heard. Success can only come after the effort has been made, making their entire existence inherently unstable. For both entrepreneur and artist, failure can be brutal and success is often a prelude to future disappointment. But they are driven by self-expression; it’s in the DNA of these independent, sometimes unreasonable, often difficult sorts. Both the artist and the entrepreneur can suffocate when shackled by a boss, a wage, or an insurance premium.

从宏观经济角度来看，艺术家和企业家都能在原本不存在需求的地方创造需求。他们推出的新产品本身就创造了需求——而这正是所有经济演进的关键。与评论家不同，艺术家和企业家永远保持乐观。他们必须相信未来。他们意志上的乐观战胜了理智上的悲观。艺术家和企业家，^这两个经常被对立起来的人，实际上是站在同一阵线上的。这些人让金钱舞动起来，推动经济和文化发展，为他人创造创意、财富和机遇。正如年轻的爱尔兰企业家、金融软件公司Stripe的创始人约翰·科里森在2022年的一篇社交媒体帖子中所说：

From a macroeconomic perspective, artists and entrepreneurs both create demand where no demand existed previously. The new products they offer create their own demand—and this is the key to all economic evolution. Unlike the critic, the artist and entrepreneur are eternally optimistic. They must believe in the future. The optimism of their will overcomes the pessimism of their intellect.¹⁰ The artist and the entrepreneur, so often pitted against each other, are in fact on the same side. These people make money dance, driving the economy and culture, generating ideas, wealth, and opportunity for others. As the young Irish entrepreneur John Collison, founder of the financial software company Stripe, put it in a social media post in 2022:

长大成人后，你会意识到周围的一切并非一直存在；是人们创造了它们。但直到最近，我才开始真正体会到“一切”都需要多么大的毅力。那家酒店，那个公园，那条铁路。世界简直就是一座充满激情的工程博物馆^。11

As you become an adult you realize that things around you weren’t always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity “everything” requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.¹¹

充满激情的人才能成就充满激情的事业。从心理学角度来看，企业家和艺术家都受到创造新事物的相同冲动的驱使；从社会学角度来看，一个奖励这些人（他们往往是某种意义上的异见者）的社会，才是能够繁荣发展的社会^。12

Passionate people make passion projects happen. From a psychological perspective, the entrepreneur and the artist are driven by the same impulses to create the new; and from a sociological perspective, a society that rewards these people—who are often dissenters of one kind or another—is the society that will flourish.¹²

创意社会

The creative society

创新——无论是商业创新还是文化创新——在受到鼓励、尊重和赞扬的地方更容易扎根。正如我们从佛罗伦萨、美因茨到阿姆斯特丹、的里雅斯特一次又一次看到的那样，那些开始容忍更多独立思考的城市或地区更有可能产生推动社会进步的创新活力。相反，我们可以看到，那些对创新嗤之以鼻的封建、教条或意识形态化的社会，往往难以真正实现创新。个人自我提升的观念往往是僵化的。即使是今天的中国，尽管仍然是一党制国家，也比毛泽东时代的中国更加开放和包容。随着中国逐渐摒弃严苛的教条，经济也随之扩张。我们一次又一次地看到这种模式重演：教条越少，增长越多。

Innovation—whether commercial or cultural—has a better chance of taking hold where it is encouraged, respected, and lauded. As we’ve seen time and again from Florence and Mainz to Amsterdam and Trieste, the city or region that begins to tolerate more independence of thought is more likely to generate the innovative energy that propels society forward. In contrast, we can see that feudal, dogmatic, or ideological societies that sneer at the notion of individual self-improvement tend to be sclerotic. Even China today, despite still being a one-party state, is more open and tolerant than the China of Mao’s day, and as China eased up on harsh dogma, the economy expanded. We see this pattern repeated time and again. Less dogma, more growth.

重要的并非创新者所占的固有比例，而是社会其他成员的态度：只要大多数人支持创新，他们就会鼓励创新者。公众情绪至关重要。^自由民主社会，即便存在缺陷，也是鼓励创意生态系统蓬勃发展的社会类型。这些社会主要基于能力，提供凭借自身才智而非世袭地位实现社会晋升的机会。包容多元、宽容的社会允许异议者冒险，并且往往经历着持续的变革，因为它们重视质疑而非教条。总的来说，创造力、宽容和商业密不可分，这正是乔伊斯在欧洲中心繁荣的多民族城市里雅斯特创作《尤利西斯》时所看到的景象。

It is not some inherent percentage of innovators that is important, but the attitude of the rest of society:¹³ as long as the majority of people are supportive, they will embolden the innovators. The public mood is critical.¹⁴ Liberal democracies, flawed as they may be, are the sort of societies that encourage the creative ecosystem to flourish. Based broadly on merit, these are places that offer the possibility of social advancement by means of your own smarts, rather than your hereditary title. Embracing diversity, tolerant societies allow dissenters to take chances and tend to experience a constant state of churn because they elevate questioning over dogma. In general, creativity, tolerance, and commerce go together, which is what Joyce saw all around him when writing Ulysses in multiethnic Trieste, a thriving city in the center of Europe.

《尤利西斯》的主人公利奥波德·布鲁姆或许在乔伊斯的里雅斯特如鱼得水，但乔伊斯将他置于都柏林，却塑造了一个终极的局外人。布鲁姆，父亲的名字是犹太人，却受过三次洗礼——一次新教洗礼，一次天主教洗礼，还有一次纯粹为了好玩——堪称异议者的典型代表。乔伊斯借布鲁姆之口，颂扬了多元性——在街头、酒吧、商店、公园，在葬礼上，在夜城，在出租车司机的候车亭里。布鲁姆漫步在都柏林，邂逅了形形色色的人：富人与穷人，都柏林本地人与乡下人，年轻人与老年人，戏谑者与学者，民族主义者与工会主义者，妓女与警察，基督徒与罪人，波西米亚人与资产阶级，艺术家与企业家。现代城市被描绘成一个可以发生这种融合的地方，一个可以找到共同点的地方。

Leopold Bloom, the hero of Ulysses, may have been at home in Joyce’s Trieste, but by placing him in Dublin, Joyce created the ultimate outsider. Bloom, a Jew by his father’s name, yet baptized three times—once Protestant, once Catholic, and once for the craic—is an archetypal dissenter. Joyce, through Bloom, extols diversity—on the street, in the bar, shops, and parks, at a funeral, down in Nighttown, and in the cabman’s shelter. As Bloom strolls around Dublin, he bumps into rich and poor, Dubs and culchies, young and old, spoofers and savants, nationalists and unionists, whores and coppers, Christians and sinners, bohemians and bourgeoisie, artists and entrepreneurs. The modern city is depicted as somewhere where this synthesis can occur, where common ground can be found.

当乔伊斯庆祝早期作品即将出版，并憧憬着更美好的未来时，他和其他人一样，都未曾意识到这环境的脆弱。欧洲很快将陷入黑暗，宽容将被偏执取代，和平将被战争取代，乐观将被绝望取代，而过去几十年里孕育出如此众多艺术和财富的那种自由奔放、略带混乱的精神也将就此消逝。

As Joyce celebrated the coming publication of his early works and looked forward to better times ahead, little did he or anyone else appreciate the fragility of this environment. Europe would soon go dark, and tolerance would be replaced with bigotry, peace with war, optimism with despair, and that freewheeling, slightly chaotic spirit that generated such art and such wealth over the previous few decades would be snuffed out.

1913年，乔伊斯在的里雅斯特聆听威尔第的歌剧，与此同时，一位23岁的维也纳画家被维也纳美术学院拒之门外，只能靠向游客兜售水彩画勉强糊口，栖身于梅尔德曼大街的一家男士旅馆。同样在维也纳，距离不到七英里，在舍恩布伦纳宫大街的一间顶层公寓里，一位化名斯塔夫罗斯·帕帕多普洛斯的格鲁吉亚革命者正在撰写一篇题为《马克思主义与民族问题》的文章。 ¹⁵这两个人，阿道夫·希特勒和约瑟夫·斯大林，都强烈反对乔伊斯笔下那个宽容、国际化、商业化的社会。最终，他们将扼杀艺术和商业的自由表达，根除异议，并将欧洲拖入末日深渊。这两位独裁者都利用金钱——人类最强大的技术——来实现他们邪恶的目的。

In 1913, the year Joyce was listening to Verdi in Trieste, a 23-year-old painter living in Vienna was turned down by the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, and found himself eking out a living selling watercolors to tourists while dossing in a men’s hostel in Meldemannstrasse. Also in Vienna, less than seven miles away, in a top-floor flat in Schönbrunner Schlossstrasse, a Georgian revolutionary, traveling under the false name of Stavros Papadopoulos, was penning an essay on “Marxism and the National Question.”¹⁵ These two men, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, were both violently opposed to the tolerant, cosmopolitan, mercantile society of Joyce’s Trieste. In time, they would crush both artistic and commercial self-expression, eradicate dissent, and drag Europe toward the apocalypse. Both dictators used money—humankind’s most potent technology—to help achieve their diabolical aims.

让他们吃蛋糕吧

Let them eat cake

1922年，爱因斯坦获得诺贝尔物理学奖，开启了核时代；英国广播公司进行了首次广播，标志着大众传播的开始；墨索里尼进军罗马，标志着法西斯主义的到来；詹姆斯·乔伊斯于该十年第二年第二个月的第二天发表了他的现代主义杰作《尤利西斯》。

In 1922, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics, ushering in the nuclear age; the BBC made its first-ever radio broadcast, marking the beginning of mass communication; Mussolini marched on Rome, signaling the arrival of fascism; and James Joyce published Ulysses, his modernist masterpiece, on the second day of the second month of the second year of the decade.

在那关键的一年九月，随着全球流感大流行逐渐消退，一位年轻的记者从法国斯特拉斯堡渡过莱茵河，来到邻近的德国小镇凯尔。他当时在巴黎，为《多伦多星报》撰稿。欧内斯特·海明威以他日后闻名的冷静客观的文风，向加拿大读者阐述了一个货币贬值的社会现实。海明威抵达莱茵河对岸的斯特拉斯堡时，发现法国一侧根本没人卖德国马克。没人想要它们。在德国一侧，他用十法郎——不到一加元——换了670马克，“够我和海明威夫人用了。”一整天花了很多钱，最后我们身上还有钱没花完。” ¹

In September of that pivotal year, as the global influenza pandemic receded, a young journalist crossed the Rhine from the French city of Strasbourg to Kehl, the neighboring German town. Based in Paris, he was writing for the Toronto Star. In his soon to be famous matter-of-fact style, Ernest Hemingway explained to his Canadian readers the reality of a society where money is destroyed. When Hemingway arrived in Strasbourg, just over the Rhine, he noticed that no one was selling German marks on the French side. No one wanted them. On the German side, he changed ten francs—less than one Canadian dollar—for 670 marks, which “lasted me and Mrs. Hemingway for a day of heavy spending and we still had marks left at the end.”¹

作者讲述了他亲眼目睹一位德国老先生买不起摊位上一个价值 12 马克的苹果——这对于年轻的海明威来说只是一笔微不足道的数目：

The writer tells of witnessing an elderly German gentleman who couldn’t afford to buy an apple from a stall for only 12 marks—a minuscule sum to young Hemingway:

这位老人，像大多数非营利阶层人士一样，毕生积蓄可能都投资在了德国战前和战时债券上，因此他连12马克都负担不起。他属于那种……收入不会随着马克和克朗购买力下降而增长的人。

The old man, whose life savings were probably, as most of the non-profiteer class are, invested in German pre-war and war bonds, could not afford a 12 mark expenditure. He is the type … whose incomes do not increase with the falling purchasing value of the mark and the krone.

海明威概括了1922年大多数德国人的困境：他们依靠工资或养老金生活，并将积蓄投入政府债券。恶性通货膨胀正在摧毁他们的生计。另一方面，如果能弄到外币，即使是德国人也能过上帝王般的生活，因为对外国人来说，德国的一切都极其廉价。法国公民被严禁在德国购买廉价制成品，以免损害法国经济，但他们却可以随心所欲地吃喝——越多越好——以此羞辱德国战败的耻辱。海明威指出，在凯尔最好的酒店享用一顿五道菜的晚餐只需150马克，仅相当于15加分。法国的孩子们偷偷越过边境，用他们宝贵的法郎大吃特吃蛋糕。海明威曾观察到：“交换的奇迹造就了一场滑稽可笑的景象：斯特拉斯堡的年轻人挤进德国糕点店，狼吞虎咽地吃得撑到吐。” ^²

Hemingway summed up the dilemma of the majority of Germans in 1922, who were dependent on wages or pensions and who had put their savings into government bonds. Their livelihood was being destroyed by hyperinflation. If, on the other hand, you could get your hands on foreign currency, even a German could live like a king, because everything was so cheap in Germany for foreigners. French citizens were absolutely forbidden from buying cheap manufactured goods in Germany lest it undermine the French economy, but they could eat and drink what they liked—the more the better—rubbing the indignity of military defeat into German noses. Hemingway noted that a five-course meal in Kehl’s best hotel cost 150 marks, equal to only 15 Canadian cents. French children, having slipped over the border, gorged themselves on cakes, thanks to their valuable French currency. Hemingway observed, “The miracle of exchange makes a swinish spectacle where the youth of the town of Strasbourg crowd into the German pastry shop to eat themselves sick.”²

海明威目睹了一个社会如何摧毁自己的货币。这样做，就破坏了国家与其公民之间的一项根本纽带。货币是国家最强大的工具之一，也是国家与公民之间契约的一部分：你守规矩，我们守规矩；你储蓄，我们保护。破坏货币体系，就是破坏国家。经济需要的不仅仅是卓越的理念；它还需要结构和相对的稳定性。商业社会，也就是经济增长的源泉，需要同时兼顾自由与安全。保护货币——确保货币具有意义、不贬值、可以储蓄，并且能够以一定的确定性进行借贷——是社会契约的重要组成部分。货币赋予人们自主权，货币是自由的工具，这也是为什么独裁者总是想要控制它的原因。这种自由必须得到捍卫。干预货币体系，就是干预推动经济发展的自由本身。

Hemingway was witnessing a society destroying its money and, in so doing, breaking one of the fundamental bonds between the state and its citizens. Money, a most powerful instrument of the state, is part of the contract a state has with the citizen: you behave and we will behave; you save your money and we will protect it. Undermine the money and you undermine the state. The economy needs more than brilliant ideas; it needs structure and relative stability. Commercial societies, places that generate economic growth, need to be both free and protected at the same time. The protection of money—making sure currency means something, doesn’t lose its value, can be saved, and lent out with a degree of certainty—is an essential part of the social contract. Money gives people autonomy and money is a tool of freedom, which is why autocrats always want to control it. That freedom must be guarded. Interfere with the money and you are interfering with the very freedom that propels the economy.

一个繁荣的社会需要谨慎管理货币。印钞过多，货币便失去了意义，通货膨胀飙升，储蓄被蚕食殆尽，社会陷入危机泥潭。印钞过少，则缺乏足够的资金支持创新，通货紧缩蔓延，伟大的创意和潜在的新公司因资金不足而无法诞生。自由社会的责任在于，在印钞过多带来的盲目繁荣和印钞过少带来的经济紧缩之间，巧妙地平衡货币供应。然而，在魏玛共和国成立之初，这种公民责任被抛弃了，或者更准确地说，是被迫抛弃的。

A prosperous society needs money to be managed carefully. Print too much of it and it loses its meaning, inflation takes off, savings are destroyed, and society lurches from crisis to crisis. Print too little and there isn’t enough money to finance innovation, deflation takes hold, and great ideas and potential new companies are never formed because there isn’t enough money to finance them. It is the responsibility of a liberal society to manage money in a fine balancing act between the giddiness of printing too much and the austerity of printing too little. That civic responsibility was abandoned, or more accurately was forced to be abandoned, in the opening years of the Weimar Republic.

当德国陷入历史上最具破坏性的货币自残事件之一时，海明威亲身记录了这一切。在当时最成功的经济体中……欧洲啊，为什么一位老先生连个苹果都买不起？德国的贫困化又是如何发生的？

As Germany descended into one of the most destructive episodes of monetary self-harm in history, Hemingway was on hand to tell the story. In the most successful economy in Europe, how come an elderly gentleman couldn’t afford an apple? How did the immiseration of Germany happen?

债务网

A web of debts

1914年，德意志帝国自信能够迅速取胜，轻信“圣诞节前就能回家”的空头支票，决定通过向国民借贷来支付第一次世界大战的费用。普鲁士军队曾在1866年击败奥地利，1870年击败法国，那么1914年又怎会例外呢？德国人笃定胜利在望，于是将民众的积蓄兑换成借据，并以高额利息吸引国内资金。由于人人都期望能够收回贷款，对普通德国人来说，借钱给政府不仅是一种民族团结的行为，也是一种审慎的个人理财方式。直到战争结束，德国民众仍然认为自己正在赢得战争，并笃信可以用掠夺自被征服民族的资产和黄金来偿还债务。然而，事实并非如此。

In 1914, imperial Germany, confident of a quick victory, believing the “home by Christmas” guff, decided to pay for the First World War by borrowing from its citizens. The Prussian army had beaten the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870, so why would 1914 be different? Confident in victory, Germany exchanged people’s savings for IOUs, which offered generous interest rates to attract domestic money. As everyone expected to be paid back, for the average German, lending to their government was not only an act of national solidarity, but it was also prudent personal financial management. Right up to the end, the German people thought they were winning the war, with the working assumption that debts would be paid back with the purloined assets and gold of conquered peoples. It didn’t turn out that way.

战后，魏玛共和国诞生，却背负着巨额战争债务。但这还不是全部。在凡尔赛，人们几乎没有宽恕的意愿。英国和法国希望新生的德国为旧德国的罪行付出代价。法国东北部的工业重镇——面积相当于荷兰——在战争中被摧毁，法国坚决要求德国承担赔偿责任。与此同时，美国也希望德国偿还债务，以便收回其向其他盟国提供的贷款。

After the war, the new Weimar Republic was born, saddled with enormous war debts. But there was more. At Versailles there was little appetite for forgiveness. Britain and France wanted the new Germany to be punished for the crimes of old Germany. France’s industrial northeast—an area the size of the Netherlands—had been destroyed in the fighting and France was adamant that Germany stump up. Meanwhile America wanted Germany to pay so that it could recoup the loans it had extended to the other Allies.

战争深刻地改变了世界金融格局。1914年，英国是世界银行家，控制着约200亿美元的海外资产。伦敦是当时的中心。全球货币中，约占国际资本贸易总额的三分之二。 ³由于金本位制时期全球贸易和投资空前繁荣，所有主要国家都彼此负债。法国拥有价值90亿美元的海外资产，其中高达50亿美元被冻结在沙皇俄国。 ⁴共产主义苏联拖欠了所有俄国旧债，尤其令法国损失惨重。其他欧洲列强为了筹集战争资金，以极低的价格出售资产，并大量借贷给直到战争末期才介入的主要参与者——美国。美国战后成为世界无可争议的债权国。它不仅拥有数十亿美元的债务，而且随着战争的进行，美国人还以极低的价格收购了欧洲的资产。这种全球货币权力从伦敦转移到纽约的趋势，将决定未来一个世纪的世界货币关系。

The war had profoundly changed the world’s financial architecture. In 1914, Britain was the world’s banker, controlling around $20 billion of foreign assets. London was the epicenter of global money, accounting for around two-thirds of all trade in international capital.³ Due to the unprecedented boom in global trade and investment during the Gold Standard era, all the major countries were indebted to each other. France had overseas assets amounting to $9 billion, of which an extraordinary $5 billion were tied up in imperial Russia alone.⁴ The communist Soviets defaulted on all Russia’s old loans, leaving the French, in particular, out of pocket. Other European powers sold assets at fire-sale prices to fund the war, borrowing heavily from the one major player that stood aloof until close to the end, America. The US emerged from the war as the world’s undisputed creditor. Not only was it owed billions, but Americans snapped up European assets at bargain-basement prices as the war progressed. This global shift in the power of money from London to New York would define the world’s monetary relations for the next century.

战争结束时，欧洲协约国欠美国120亿美元，其中英国欠50亿美元，法国欠40亿美元。 ⁵ 英国自身也欠各国110亿美元，其中包括法国欠的30亿美元，以及俄罗斯欠的超过25亿美元，而这笔钱英国再也拿不回来了。 ⁶世界深陷债务和反债务的泥潭。20世纪初的最后贷款人——美国，意识到自己已经如亚历山大·汉密尔顿一个多世纪前与塔列朗会谈时所预言的那样，占据了主导地位，自然不会放过这个机会。

At the end of the war, the European Allied powers owed $12 billion to the US, of which Britain owed $5 billion and France $4 billion.⁵ Britain itself was owed $11 billion by various countries, including $3 billion by France—and over $2.5 billion by Russia that it would never see again.⁶ The world was enmeshed with debts and counterdebts. The early twentieth century’s lender of last resort, America, understanding that it had arrived in the dominant position Alexander Hamilton had predicted when talking to Talleyrand over a century earlier, was not about to squander this opportunity.

从此以后，美国而非英国将成为全球金融霸主。而正如昔日霸主沦为匍匐者时常见的情形，垂头丧气的英国会伺机报复。它通过惩罚羽翼未丰、脆弱不堪的魏玛共和国来实现这一目的。战败的德国则要承担一切后果。

From now on America, not Britain, would be the top dog of global money and, as is typical when the once dominant becomes supplicant, crestfallen Britain would extract its pound of flesh. It did so by punishing the embryonic and fragile Weimar Republic. Defeated Germany was on the hook for everything.

吱吱作响的豆荚

Squeaking pips

在1918年英国大选期间，首相劳合·乔治承诺要像榨柠檬一样榨干战败的德国，直到榨干最后一滴油。这位威尔士人说到做到。1914年，1马克价值25美分。到了1920年，它只值1.5美分。尽管战败后德国政局和社会一片混乱，但大多数人认为马克的贬值已经结束。人们普遍认为，德国在经历战后动荡期后会迅速复苏，这种想法是可以理解的。战前，德国是欧洲最富裕、最具创新力的经济体，在文学、科学和哲学领域都处于世界领先地位；到了20世纪20年代，德国的诺贝尔奖获得者人数超过了美国和英国的总和。德国在战前是^一个正直、纪律严明、秩序井然的国家，大多数人难以想象德国会就此沉沦。德国社会大规模贫困化的想法根本不在人们的考虑范围之内。

During the British General Election campaign of 1918, Prime Minister Lloyd George promised to squeeze defeated Germany “like a lemon until the pips squeak.” The Welshman was as good as his word. In 1914, one mark was worth 25 US cents. By 1920, it was worth only 1.5 cents. Despite political and social chaos following military defeat, most people thought that the collapse in the mark had run its course. There was an understandable and widespread belief that Germany, after a period of postdefeat turbulence, would snap out of it. Before the war, Germany was the richest, most innovative economy in Europe, leading the world in literature, science, and philosophy; by the 1920s, Germany had produced more Nobel Prize winners than America and Britain combined.⁷ Home of prewar probity, discipline, and order, it was inconceivable to most people that Germany wouldn’t recover. The idea of mass pauperization of German society was not entertained.

但德国的处境已经发生了深刻的变化——政治、社会和经济层面皆是如此。首先，德国输掉了一场战争，而直到战争结束，大多数德国人都认为自己正在赢得这场战争。与部分被占领的胜利的法国和比利时不同，没有外国军队踏上德国的土地。德国人难以接受战败的事实。这种不信任助长了“背后捅刀”阴谋论的盛行，该阴谋论认为，强大的民族主义德国军队并非战败，而是被社会主义者、自由主义者以及金融家和犹太人等内部的、具有国际视野的敌人出卖了。

But Germany’s situation had changed profoundly—politically, socially, and monetarily. First, it had lost a war that, up until the very end, most Germans thought it was winning. Unlike the victorious French and Belgians, who had been partially occupied, no foreign troops had set foot on German soil. It was hard for Germans to accept that they had lost. This disbelief fueled the “stabbed in the back” conspiracy, which maintained that the solid nationalist German army wasn’t defeated but betrayed by socialists, liberals, and internal, cosmopolitan enemies like financiers and Jews.

1920年，除了继承的战争债券外，德国还面临着巨额赔款，总额相当于德国战前GDP的100%（这是对最初要求的GDP的300%进行重新谈判的结果）。最终的结算方案要求德国每年需向外国支付相当于其国内生产总值5%的赔款。在这种压力下，德国经济摇摇欲坠。实际上，支付赔款意味着德国必须将实物商品转移出境，但却无法获得相应的硬通货。产品被转移到法国，发票被用来抵扣应付的赔款，因此原本应该摆放在德国货架上的德国制造产品，如今却出现在法国商店里。货架空空如也必然会推高物价，导致排队抢购或通货膨胀，这取决于德国是否决定增发货币来应对。此外，还有一个更复杂的问题。当产品被转移出境时，税收收入也会下降，因为间接税（例如增值税）的损失就随之而来。赔款对财政赤字产生了连锁反应。空荡荡的货架和不断恶化的公共财政加剧了战败后本已存在的恐慌情绪。

In 1920, apart from the inherited war bonds, Germany faced enormous reparation bills that amounted to 100 percent of German prewar GDP (a renegotiation of the 300 percent of GDP originally demanded). The final settlement required that Germany transfer 5 percent of its GDP to foreign powers every year. Under such pressure, the German economy was buckling. In practical terms, paying reparations means the country must transfer real goods out of the economy, but the country doesn’t get paid in hard currency for this output. Products were transferred to France and the invoices used to discount what was owed, so products manufactured in Germany that were supposed to be on German shelves were now in French shops. Empty shelves always put pressure on prices, guaranteeing queues or inflation, depending on whether or not the country decides to print money in response. There is an added complication. When produce is taken out of the economy, tax revenue falls because there is a loss of indirect tax, such as VAT levied on goods sold. Reparations had a knock-on effect on the budget deficit. Empty shelves and deteriorating public finances exacerbated the sense of panic that had set in after the unexpected defeat.

德国政府被迫以黄金支付赔款，随之而来的马克抛售给德国货币带来了持续的贬值压力。四面楚歌的德国政府无力提高税收，于是柏林转而向本国央行借款，用于支付本国生产商购买那些根本无法在德国销售的商品。结果，德国商店里商品短缺，而且由于政府补贴法国永远不会购买的商品，德国政府债务也大幅累积，加上经常账户赤字和不断贬值的货币，推高了进口商品价格，进一步加剧了通货膨胀。

The German state was obliged to pay reparations in gold, and the consequent sale of marks put ongoing downward pressure on the currency. The government, hemmed in on all sides, was too fragile to raise taxes, so instead Berlin borrowed from its own central bank to pay its own producers for goods that would never be sold in Germany. As a result, Germany faced a shortage of goods in shops and, as the government was subsidizing German manufacturers for goods that the French would never pay for, it also suffered from a massive buildup of government debt, added to a current account deficit and a constantly weakening currency, which pushed up the price of imports, fueling inflation further.

这样的金融组合本身就足以引发爆炸，但内部政治斗争使情况雪上加霜。在街头，摇摇欲坠的魏玛政府试图占领自由主义阵营。魏玛共和国的中间派不断面临来自左翼受苏联影响的共产主义者和右翼老派民族主义者的斗争。左翼共产主义者认为政府在为盟军效力，损害普通工人的利益；右翼民族主义者则认为政府在为盟军效力，损害德意志民族的利益。这两个极端派别都要求软弱的魏玛政府做出昂贵的承诺：一方面是工人教育，另一方面是退伍军人的战争抚恤金。秉持着社会民主主义的基因，魏玛政府也致力于社会改革，扩大医疗和公共住房方面的支出。所有这些都给公共财政带来了压力。一个岌岌可危、长期捉襟见肘的政府既不能违背其国际义务，也不能撤回其国内的政治承诺。为了履行这些国内义务，政府开始大量印钞，同时试图储备足够的黄金来支付盟军的债务。脆弱的魏玛共和国竭尽全力地维持着收支平衡。

Such a financial cocktail would have been explosive enough, but internal politics made things even worse. On the streets, the brittle Weimar government, trying to occupy the liberal center, faced constant battles with Soviet-inspired communists on the left, who believed that the government was working for the Allies against the average workingman, and old-school nationalists on the right, who believed that the government was working for the Allies against the German nation. Each extreme faction called on the weak Weimar government to make expensive commitments: education for workers on the one hand, war pensions for demobbed soldiers on the other. Reflecting its socially democratic DNA, the liberal Weimar government also committed itself to social reform, expanding spending on health and public housing. All this was putting pressure on the public finances. A precarious and perennially cash-strapped government couldn’t renege on its international obligations, nor could it revoke its domestic political promises. To cover these national commitments, it began to print more and more money, while trying to ring-fence enough gold to pay the Allies. The fragile Weimar Republic juggled as best it could.

货币波动越剧烈，人们就越焦虑不安。在正常情况下，如果遇到这种动荡，中央银行会动用自身储备来稳定汇率——如果货币下跌，就以可预测且稳定的方式卖出黄金买入；如果货币上涨过快，就买入黄金卖出。这在专业术语中被称为“公开市场操作”。简单来说，就是为失控的货币市场注入理性。但德国无力动用其黄金储备，因为这些储备需要用于支付赔款。资金在德国境内外流动，完全取决于各种传言和反传言。坏消息导致货币汇率剧烈波动，而且大多时候都在下跌。

The more the currency jumped around, the more the people became jittery. In normal times, if faced with such skittishness, a central bank will smooth things over, using its own reserves to manage the currency—either selling gold to buy the currency in a predictable and stable fashion if it falls, or buying gold to sell the currency if it rises too quickly. This is called “open market operations” in the jargon. In plain English, it is about injecting sobriety into a wayward currency market. But Germany couldn’t afford to spend its gold reserves, which it needed for reparations. Money flowed in and out of Germany, depending on rumor and counter-rumor. Bad news sent the currency plummeting up and down; mostly down.

1922年6月，消息雪上加霜，温文尔雅的实业家、犹太裔外交部长瓦尔特·拉特瑙被右翼分子刺杀，引发了恐慌。拉特瑙在柏林、巴黎和伦敦都备受尊敬。如今谁还愿意代表德国谈判？德国国内也面临着一个难题：武装民兵在街头横行，如果政府镇压各种隐秘的右翼团体，会不会引发内战？马克暴跌。由于没有其他可行的替代方案，加上共产党鼓吹革命、步步紧逼，政府只能继续印钞，向工人支付工资，以安抚无产阶级。难以想象的是，1922年，马克兑美元汇率从190跌至7600，物价却上涨了40倍。投机者们大赚了一笔。对当地人来说，一切都买不起。正如海明威所说，对外国人而言，德国成了欧洲的廉价市场。

In June 1922, news went from bad to worse when Walther Rathenau, the urbane industrialist and Jewish foreign minister, was assassinated by right-wingers. This sparked panic. Rathenau was respected in Berlin, Paris, and London. Who would negotiate for Germany now? Within Germany, the state faced a conundrum. With armed militia on the streets, if the government cracked down on the various shadowy right-wing groups, would civil war follow? The mark fell precipitously. Without any viable alternative, and with the communists preaching revolution and breathing down its neck, the government continued to print money to pay workers to keep the proletariat on side. Hard as it is to imagine, in one year, 1922, the mark fell from 190 to 7,600 against the dollar and prices rose fortyfold. Speculators had a field day. For locals, everything was unaffordable. For foreigners, as Hemingway observed, Germany was the bargain basement of Europe.

零之年

The year of zeros

1923年初，德国未能向法国交付10万根电线杆，这些电线杆被德国工人从德国城镇挖走，这无疑是对法国的侮辱。对法国而言，这成了压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草。法国急于利用德国不愿以实物支付赔款的借口，实施一项自1918年以来一直在酝酿的计划。法比联军占领了鲁尔区，夺取了德国的工业中心地带。如果德国不向巴黎和布鲁塞尔交付赔款，法比两国将不惜一切代价夺取德国的一切。由此引发的恐慌导致马克进一步贬值。1923年1月11日，当法比联军进驻接收电线杆时，马克兑美元汇率已从圣诞节时的2.7万跌至5万，并且还在快速下跌。

In early 1923, Germany failed to deliver 100,000 telegraph poles to France that were, degradingly, being dug up by German workers from German towns. For France, this was the final straw. It was keen to use Germany’s unwillingness to pay reparations in kind as an excuse to implement a plan that Paris had been working on since 1918. French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, seizing Germany’s industrial heartland. If the Germans wouldn’t bring their reparations to Paris and Brussels, France and Belgium would take everything they could get their hands on. In the resulting panic, the currency fell further. On January 11, 1923, as the French and Belgians moved in to claim the telegraph poles, the mark, which at Christmas had been 27,000 to the dollar, was now at 50,000 to the dollar, and falling fast.

在鲁尔区，德国工人举行了总罢工。面对占领，一些大型德国公司，例如克虏伯（一家在战争期间炮弹产量超过任何其他制造商的钢铁生产商），呼吁发起大规模的公民不服从运动。 ⁸ 一些由退伍军人组成的秘密组织也对占领进行了抵抗，他们破坏铁路并杀害了数名占领军士兵。法国对此做出了反应。2月16日，一名名叫约瑟芬·马拉克特的年轻德国女子遭到几名法国水兵的轮奸，1923年整个春季，德国妇女遭强奸的事件不断增加。当地德国民众义愤填膺；这些案件凸显了盟军占领者的残暴。德国团结起来反对占领，并列举其人民遭受的虐待，希望以此向国际社会（实际上是美国）施压，迫使法国结束占领。 ⁹

In the Ruhr, German workers went on general strike in response to the occupation, while some large German companies such as Krupp—a steel producer that during the war had made more shells than any other manufacturer—called for a mass campaign of civil disobedience.⁸ The occupation was also resisted by secretive groups run by former soldiers, who sabotaged railway lines and killed several occupying soldiers. The French reacted. On February 16, a young German woman called Josephine Malakert was gang-raped by several French sailors, and throughout the spring of 1923 incidences of rape of German women increased. Local Germans were incensed; these cases highlighted the brutality of the Allied occupiers. Germany unified against the occupation, citing the abuse of its people in the hope that it might pressurize the international community—the United States, in effect—to persuade the French to end the occupation.⁹

魏玛政府意识到，如果能坚持到法国被迫撤军，就能取得一场急需的民族胜利，于是采取了拖延战术。为了声援罢工的鲁尔区工人，政府印钞支付他们的工资。中央银行印钞越多，通货膨胀就越严重，德国陷入了一场拉锯战：一方面是德国民众能否承受货币混乱，另一方面是盟军能否团结一致支持法国的占领。这场最终演变成极具破坏性的胆量博弈的赌局中，德国人赌的是，美国（以及英国）会在德国社会因恶性通货膨胀而崩溃之前向法国施压。德国的命运取决于谁先妥协^。

The Weimar government, sensing a much-needed national victory if it could resist until the French were urged to pull out, played for time. In solidarity, it printed money to pay the striking Ruhrland workers’ salaries. The more the central bank printed, the more inflation rose, locking Germany into a battle between the willingness of its own people to sustain monetary chaos versus the ability of the Allies to remain united behind France’s occupation. In what was ultimately a highly destructive game of chicken, the Germans were gambling that the Americans (and the British) would lean on the French before German society imploded under the madness of hyperinflation. The fate of Germany rested on who would blink first.¹⁰

到1923年8月，1美元兑换62万马克；到11月，1美元兑换6300亿马克。双方都毫不动摇。对法国而言，占领是它从德国榨取的代价之一，尽管事实上，在长达十个月的占领期间，法国从该地区获得的煤炭和焦炭比德国少得多。魏玛共和国获得的资金比其军队入侵前十天获得的资金还要多。对魏玛共和国而言，资助对侵略者的消极抵抗是值得付出的代价，以确保战胜法国，并向普通德国民众表明魏玛不会向敌人屈服。这场决战的代价是德国的恶性通货膨胀和货币体系的崩溃。

By August 1923, a dollar was worth 620,000 marks and by November, one dollar was 630 billion marks. Neither side blinked. For France, occupation was part of the price it was extracting from Germany, even if in reality France received in the ten months of occupation less coal and coke from the region than it had received in the ten days before its troops invaded. For the Weimar Republic, financing passive resistance to the invaders was a price worth paying to secure a victory over the French and show the ordinary German people that Weimar wouldn’t bow to its enemies. The cost of this showdown was German hyperinflation and the destruction of money.

在那动荡的夏天，通货膨胀飙升，德国人涌入电影院观看当季热门影片——弗里茨·朗的《赌徒马布斯博士》。随着积蓄迅速缩水，普通民众急于尽快花掉手中的现金。他们涌向酒吧、夜总会、餐馆和电影院——所有地方都人满为患。柏林著名的夜生活也随之蓬勃发展，货币流通的速度与印钞的速度一样快。紧握金钱，你将失去一切；挥霍金​​钱，至少你享受了一段美好时光。一个新的投机阶层应运而生，他们买卖货币，在民众普遍贫困的情况下暴富。正如柏林一家报纸所言：“新贵们的挥霍无度、股市上的快速投机、夜总会、对享乐的沉迷、投机活动、大量的走私和伪造行为，正是我们这个时代的写照。” ¹¹

During that turbulent summer, as inflation skyrocketed, Germans flocked to cinemas to watch the season’s blockbuster, Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler. With their money and savings disappearing, ordinary people were eager to get rid of cash as quickly as they could. They spent on bars, clubs, restaurants, and cinemas—all were teeming. Berlin’s famous nightlife boomed as money changed hands as quickly as it was printed. Hold on to money and you lost everything. Spend it and at least you had a good time. A new class of speculators emerged, buying and selling currency, and getting rich in the face of mass impoverishment. As one Berlin newspaper maintained, “The extravagance of the newly rich, the rapid gambling on the stock exchange, the clubs, the addiction to pleasure, the speculation, the vast amount of smuggling, counterfeiting, is a portrait of our times.”¹¹

朗的这部巨作，一部长达四个半小时、分为两部分的史诗巨作，捕捉到了国家陷入恶性通货膨胀混乱时期的疯狂景象。影片的主角，邪恶的马布斯博士，是一位拥有操控股价、操纵股市的邪恶催眠师，他利用人们的心理和钱包牟利。对于魏玛德国的普通民众来说，股票和货币的波动令人费解。马布斯这个角色，一个幕后操纵一切的超自然阴谋家，引起了饱受创伤、迷茫无助的民众的共鸣。人们的钱怎么可能凭空消失呢？然而，对数百万人来说，这一切似乎就是如此。与此同时，富有的投机者们却从中获利。货币贬值越多，这些人似乎赚得越多，而普通家庭却越发陷入赤贫。

Lang’s blockbuster, a four-and-a-half-hour, two-part epic, captured the madness as the country descended into hyperinflationary chaos. The movie’s protagonist, the evil Dr. Mabuse, is a malignant hypnotist with the magic power to drive share prices up and down and manipulate the stock market, exploiting people’s minds and their pockets. To the average person in Weimar Germany, the movements of stocks and the currency were beyond comprehension. The character of Mabuse, a supernatural archconspirator orchestrating it all, struck a chord with a damaged and confused population. People’s money couldn’t just disappear, surely? And yet it seemed that way to millions. Meanwhile, rich speculators were profiting. The more the currency fell, the more these people seemed to make, and the more the average family sank into destitution.

当大多数人血本无归时，有人却从中获利。投机者——或者用“拉夫克” （Raffke，意为“敛财者”）来形容——成了既令人鄙夷又令人着迷的人物。这些人是如何操纵货币市场的？为什么他们总是比普通民众领先一步，凌驾于所有人之上？拉夫克无处不在，他们蔑视舆论，甚至出现在德国第一份大众杂志《柏林画报》（ Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung）的版面上。该杂志在20世纪20年代的发行量高达每周180万份。当时卡尔·罗斯勒（Carl Rössler）创作的一首歌舞表演歌曲《 Wir stehen ver-kehrt》（世事颠倒）就讽刺了拉夫克，他们“既能负担得起香槟、龙虾和女人，也能为自己的浴室定制画作，即便他们分不清波提切利的画作是干邑还是奶酪。” ¹²

Someone was winning while the majority lost everything. The speculator—or Raffke, “money grabber”—became a figure of both scorn and fascination. How did such people engineer the currency market? How come they always seemed to be one step ahead of the average citizen, lording it over everyone? The Raffke was everywhere, giving the two fingers to public opinion, appearing in the pages of Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Germany’s first mass-market magazine, which in the 1920s had a circulation of 1.8 million a week. “Wir stehen ver-kehrt” (Things Are Topsy-Turvy), a cabaret song of the time written by Carl Rössler, referred to the Raffke who “can afford champagne, lobster, and women, just as he can commission paintings for his bathroom, even though he does not know whether a Botticelli is a cognac or a cheese.”¹²

在物价飞涨、投机者大发横财的世界里，普通民众茫然无措，而马布斯则成了贪婪和恶意的化身。事实上，投机并非人为策划，而是人们为了应对恶性通货膨胀而采取的一种生存策略。据估计，参与货币投机的德国人多达一百万，远非少数消息灵通人士的专属。

In a world where prices were rising steeply and profiteers were making fortunes, the average citizen was discombobulated, and Mabuse served as the personification of greed and malice. In truth, speculation wasn’t orchestrated; it was a survival mechanism for people who were trying to figure out ways of dealing with the hyperinflation. Far from being the preserve of a small, well-informed coterie, it is estimated that one million Germans were involved in the currency speculation game.

尽管恶性通货膨胀摧毁了社会契约，但社会各阶层受到的影响却不尽相同。数百万辛勤工作、中产阶级、纳税且信任政府的德国人，他们的积蓄化为乌有。教师、公务员、警察、医生、职员、白领、律师、学者、记者——这些与国家签订契约、购买了本应稳赚不赔的战争债券的专业人士，最终都遭受了沉重打击。体面的中产阶级也未能幸免。下层中产阶级自然而然地感到，新生的魏玛共和国抛弃了他们。

Although hyperinflation destroyed the social contract, different sectors of society were affected differently. Millions of hard-working, middle-class, tax-paying, government-trusting Germans saw their savings wiped out. Teachers, civil servants, policemen, doctors, clerks, white-collar functionaries, lawyers, academics, journalists—these professionals who had entered into a contract with the state and bought the supposedly cast-iron war bonds—were hung out to dry. The respectable middle and lower middle classes naturally felt that the new Weimar Republic had abandoned them.

相比之下，拥有实物资产的人，例如地主、农民和实业家，受到的影响较小，因为他们的财产价值会随着通货膨胀而上调。而对于最底层的工人来说，即使你没有任何积蓄，你的处境也不会发生太大的变化：你没有积蓄可以损失，而且对共产主义的恐惧意味着工人的工资或多或少能够跟上通货膨胀的步伐。（工资与通货膨胀挂钩，这意味着通货膨胀率越高，工人的收入就越多。当然，其结果是工资增长推高了通货膨胀，而通货膨胀又推高了工资。）

In contrast, people who owned physical assets, such as landlords, farmers, and industrialists, didn’t suffer so much, as the value of their property adjusted upward with inflation. And at the bottom, if you were a worker who had no savings, your position didn’t change too drastically either: you had no savings to lose and fear of communism meant that workers’ wages more or less kept up with inflation. (Wages were indexed, meaning the higher the rate of inflation, the more workers were paid. The effect, of course, was that wage increases pushed up inflation and inflation pushed up wages.)

处于社会顶层和底层的人们受这场混乱的影响最小，而作为社会政治支柱的中层民众则遭受了最大的打击。恶性通货膨胀之后，人们总想找个人来承担责任——这在政治上始终是一种强大的驱动力。有一个人正试图让自己和他的政党从这场社会灾难中获利。1923年11月，正值恶性通货膨胀达到顶峰之际，阿道夫·希特勒领导了一场失败的慕尼黑啤酒馆政变。尽管这场叛乱极其失败，几乎滑稽可笑，但它公开反对魏玛共和国的立场却让希特勒得以将自己塑造成一位英雄般的父亲形象，一位充满感召力的领袖，一位甘愿为自己的信念锒铛入狱的领袖。亲眼目睹了1923年的混乱，目睹了国家与人民之间的契约被撕毁，希特勒明白了货币消亡所带来的机会。这是一个他永远不会忘记的教训。

Those at the top and at the bottom were least affected by the chaos, while those in the middle, the political ballast of the society, suffered most. After the hyperinflation, people would want somebody to blame—always a potent political imperative. One man was positioning himself and his party to benefit from this social catastrophe. In November 1923, just as hyperinflation was peaking, Adolf Hitler led a failed Munich Bierkeller putsch. Although a spectacularly ineffective rebellion, comical almost, the public stand against Weimar would allow Hitler to paint himself as the heroic father figure, an inspired leader, who was ready to serve time in prison for his convictions. Hitler, having witnessed the 1923 chaos, when the contract between the state and the people was torn up, understood the opportunity presented when money dies. It was a lesson he would not forget.

两个战俘营的故事

A tale of two prison camps

1943年8月的一个夜晚，萨洛蒙·“萨利”·斯莫利亚诺夫，一位曾经出色的肖像画家，也是魏玛柏林之夜的见证者。夜总会老板斯莫利亚诺夫（Smolianoff）最终落入了萨克森豪森集中营的炼狱。多年前，这位来自敖德萨的难民利用夜总会洗钱，找到了自己的真正职业：伪造。他那双画家般的手和对细节的精湛把握，在伪造货币的行当里让他赚得盆满钵满。20世纪20年代，他因在阿姆斯特丹流通假五十英镑钞票而被捕。服刑期满后，他回到了柏林，正好赶上了20世纪30年代中期伪造货币的黄金时期。随着纳粹政权的暴行逐渐显露，成千上万的人争相逃离德国。1938年11月“水晶之夜”的反犹暴行之后，这股逃离的浪潮更加汹涌。急于逃离的犹太人慷慨地付钱给他，而身为犹太人的萨洛蒙则成为了伪造护照和出境签证黑市的核心人物。

On an August evening in 1943, Salomon “Sally” Smolianoff, once a fine portrait painter as well as a Weimar Berlin nightclub operator, found himself in the hell of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Years before, using nightclubs to launder cash, Smolianoff—a refugee from Odesa—had found his true vocation: forgery. His painter’s hands and exquisite attention to detail were generously rewarded in the counterfeiting game. In the 1920s, he had been arrested in Amsterdam for distributing fake English fifty-pound notes. After serving a short sentence he made it back to Berlin, just in time for the mid-1930s bonanza in the forgery business. As the true monstrosity of the Nazi regime became apparent, thousands scrambled to leave Germany. After the anti-Semitic violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938, that constant current swelled. Jewish people, desperate to flee, paid him handsomely and Salomon, Jewish himself, was at the center of a black market in fake passports and exit visas.

随着反犹主义限制措施的不断出台，他合法工作的机会日益减少，于是他开始磨练伪造技艺。伪造品必须在美学上完美无瑕：伪造文件就像印钞一样，是合法印刷商和精明的造假者之间的一场猫鼠游戏。官方设计人员在文件中嵌入了安全机制，以防造假者。要成为一名伪造大师，斯莫利亚诺夫需要技巧、诡计和想象力。仅仅拥有一双灵巧的双手是不够的；他还需要精通工程学、雕刻、金属加工、模具制作和仿形技术，才能复制复杂的图案。这位伪造大师就像达芬奇和古腾堡的结合体——一半是画家，一半是印刷商。

As his opportunities for legitimate work dried up with every fresh anti-Semitic restriction, he honed his forgery craft. The forgeries had to be aesthetically perfect copies: forging documents, like printing money, is a game of cat and mouse between the legitimate printers and the enterprising counterfeiter. Official designers embedded security tricks within documents to protect against the fraudster. To be an expert forger, Smolianoff needed skill, guile, and imagination. Having a delicate artistic hand wasn’t enough; he needed to master engineering, engraving, metalwork, molding, and pantography to replicate intricate designs. The master forger is one part Leonardo, one part Gutenberg—half painter, half printer.

斯莫利亚诺夫最终还是难逃法网，他在毛特豪森集中营的苦役营里挖了四年矿，靠着给纳粹看守画完美（且颇为讨喜）的肖像画勉强维持生计。萨洛蒙既是犹太人又是罪犯，生存的几率并不高，但他最终还是活了下来。1943年，他获得了一次离奇的赦免。他被从奥地利集中营转移到柏林附近的萨克森豪森集中营。他的任务是什么？摧毁英格兰银行。

The law eventually caught up with Smolianoff again and he spent four years mining rocks in the slave labor camp of Mauthausen, surviving by drawing perfect (and flattering) portraits of his Nazi guards. As both a Jew and a convicted criminal, Salomon’s chances of survival weren’t great, but in 1943 he received a bizarre reprieve. He was moved from the Austrian camp to Sachsenhausen, near Berlin. His mission? To break the Bank of England.

夕阳西下，在德国北部平坦的平原上，即使到了晚上十点以后，依然可以看到落日余晖。我们可以想象，伪造者正用手指摩挲着一块亚麻布和碎布的混合物，拼命地试图辨认出五英镑纸币的成分，因为这关乎他的性命。落日或许让斯莫利亚诺夫想起，在萨克森豪森集中营的炼狱之外，还有一个更广阔的世界。

As the sun was going down in the west, visible in June until after 10 p.m. across the flat north German plain, we can imagine the forger thumbing a linen and cloth mixture, trying desperately, because his life depended on it, to establish the components used in the English five-pound note. The setting sun may have reminded Smolianoff that there was a world somewhere beyond this Sachsenhausen hell.

五百英里以南，在另一个德国战俘营——施塔拉格七号A营（Stalag VII-A）里，理查德·拉德福德（Richard Radford）也看着同样的夕阳落入巴伐利亚的山丘。他数着香烟，等待着红十字会的包裹，庆幸自己曾在加拿大军队服役。加拿大红十字会是盟军中最仁慈的组织，拉德福德想象着那些善良的安大略省家庭主妇们往包裹里塞满了午餐肉、蛋糕和果酱。她们永远不会知道，她们的善举给战俘们带来了多大的鼓舞。

Five hundred miles to the south, in another German prison camp, Stalag VII-A, Richard Radford watched that same sun set over the Bavarian hills. He counted his cigarettes and waited for the Red Cross package, praising his luck for having fought in a Canadian regiment. The Canadian Red Cross was the most benevolent among the Allied nations, and Radford imagined wholesome Ontarian housewives stuffing their parcels with Spam, cake, and jam. They’d never know how much their efforts boosted the prisoners.

拉德福德和斯莫利亚诺夫的共同之处在于金钱。拉德福德试图创造财富；斯莫利亚诺夫则试图摧毁财富。

What Radford and Smolianoff had in common was money. Radford was trying to create it; Smolianoff was trying to destroy it.

虚构的钱

Made-up money

拉德福德是一位年轻的剑桥大学毕业的经济学家，1942年在利比亚被俘，此后余下的战争时光都在战俘营中度过。在第七A战俘营（Stalag VII-A），拉德福德注意到了一些不同寻常的事情。在这里，在如此艰苦的环境下，他的战友们竟然发明了一种通用货币。

Radford, a young Cambridge-educated economist, had been taken prisoner in Libya in 1942 and would spend the rest of the war in a prison camp. In Stalag VII-A, Radford noticed something unusual. Here, in the most trying of circumstances, his peers had invented a form of common money.

红十字会向囚犯们提供了额外的口粮。除了营地的常规伙食外，所有战俘都必须领取一定数量的香烟，以及果酱、黄油、茶、糖浆、蜂蜜、肉类、咸牛肉、鲑鱼、午餐肉、巧克力、盐、胡椒粉、肥皂、土豆饼、奶粉和罐装蔬菜。由于没有真正的货币，战俘们用香烟作为交换媒介和可以交易的财富来源。香烟的价格成为战俘制度的基础价格：流通中的香烟越多，香烟的价值就越低，而其他所有物品的价格就越高。

The Red Cross supplied the prisoners with extra rations to supplement the regular camp meals. All prisoners were given a compulsory ration of cigarettes, as well as jam, butter, tea, treacle, honey, meat, corned beef, salmon, Spam, chocolate, salt, pepper, soap, hash browns, powdered milk, and tinned vegetables. With no actual money, the prisoners used cigarettes as a medium of exchange and a source of wealth that could be traded. The price of cigarettes became the foundational price of the prisoner of war (POW) system: the more cigarettes in circulation, the lower the value of cigarettes, and the higher the price of everything else.

这些囚犯——英国人、加拿大人、南斯拉夫人、波兰人、法国人和俄罗斯人——本能地理解了金钱这种共通的语言。一种独立于正式军衔等级制度的市场经济，在没有上级操纵的情况下自行建立起来。一个精明的士兵的影响力可能超过一位三星将军。金钱带来地位，并凌驾于文化之上。苏联共产党人、印度锡克教徒、英国贵族和法国农民因金钱而走到了一起。与此同时，在个人层面上，金钱赋予了囚犯们对自己世界的一种微弱掌控权，一种即便身陷囹圄也能行使自身主权和自主权的途径。

Instinctively, the prisoners—British, Canadian, Yugoslav, Polish, French, and Russian—understood the common language of money. A market economy, independent from the formal hierarchy of military rank, established itself without anyone pulling strings from above. An enterprising private might have more influence than a three-star general. Money delivered status and it overruled culture. Soviet communists, Indian Sikhs, British patricians, and French farmers were brought together by money. At the same time, on a personal level, money gave the prisoners some small control over their world, some tiny way of exercising their own sovereignty and autonomy despite incarceration.

战争结束后获释的拉德福德撰写了一篇引人入胜的文章，记述了战俘经济的兴起，揭示了货币经济如何有机地产生，货币如何运作，以及贸易体系在演变和变得日益复杂的过程中会发生什么。他对战俘之间用口粮交换而迅速形成的“社会组织”非常感兴趣。他这样描述自己的经历：“这种经济生活的本质在于其普遍性和自发性；它并非出于有意识的模仿，而是对当时迫切需求和环境的自然反应。” ¹³

On his release at the end of the war, Radford wrote a compelling account about the emergence of the prisoners’ economy, revealing how a monetary economy organically emerges, how currencies operate, and what happens to a trading system as it evolves and becomes more complex. He was intrigued by the “social organization” that sprang up so readily as prisoners traded rations with each other. He wrote of his experience: “The essential interest lies in the universality and the spontaneity of this economic life; it came into existence not by conscious imitation but as a response to the immediate needs and circumstances.”¹³

战俘营经济也像现实经济一样经历了经济和信贷周期，包括上升、下降、通货紧缩和通货膨胀。红十字会扮演着战俘营中央银行的角色，每月发放25到50包香烟，以此控制“货币”供应。这种货币的价值取决于特定时期经济对货币的需求量，而这又与人性息息相关，正如现实世界一样。当人们乐观且渴望消费时，货币需求就会旺盛，系统中的货币供应量也会促进更多交易。反之，如果人们对未来感到担忧，许多人可能会选择囤积资金，等待未来消费的机会。

The POW economy experienced economic and credit cycles, just as in the real economy, with upswings, downturns, bouts of deflation and inflation. The Red Cross acted as a kind of POW central bank, issuing between twenty-five to fifty packs of cigarettes each month, controlling the “money” supply. The value of that currency was determined by how much money the economy was demanding at a particular time, which is a function of human nature, as it is in the real world. When people are optimistic and want to spend, the demand for money will be buoyant and the amount of money in the system will generate more commerce. If, on the other hand, punters are a bit worried about the future, many might choose to hoard their money, waiting for an opportunity to spend in the future.

在最艰难的处境下，成千上万来自不同文化背景、说着不同语言、遵循不同宗教和道德准则的人们，在没有外力干预的情况下，竟然创造出了金钱这套普世的准则并加以遵守。战俘营里的情况同样适用于社会：人们需要金钱来维系他们的世界。正因如此，希特勒在目睹了1923年德国的混乱之后，下令制造了世界上规模最大的伪造案——也正因如此，犹太伪造者萨莉·斯莫利亚诺夫最终被关押在萨克森豪森集中营，眼睁睁地看着夕阳西下。

Unprompted, and in the most trying circumstances, thousands of humans from different cultures, speaking different languages, following different religious and moral codes, managed to create and abide by the universal code of money. What pertained in the POW camp pertains in society: people need money to organize their world. This is precisely why Hitler, having witnessed the pandemonium of Germany in 1923, ordered the greatest forgery the world had ever seen—and why the Jewish forger Sally Smolianoff found himself in Sachsenhausen watching the sun go down.

希特勒的钱

Hitler’s money

^{囚犯93594号萨利·}斯莫利亚诺夫的恶名早已远扬。14命运弄人，一次离奇的转折救了他的命。一名名叫伯恩哈德·克鲁格的党卫军军官，此前曾在柏林的一次打击犯罪行动中逮捕过斯莫利亚诺夫。希特勒指派他负责大规模伪造货币的计划。纳粹​​分子克鲁格知道他需要犹太人斯莫利亚诺夫。他在毛特豪森集中营找到了饱受折磨的斯莫利亚诺夫，并将他带到了萨克森豪森集中营。斯莫利亚诺夫现在实际上领导着一支由142名犹太专家组成的杂牌军，这些人是从第三帝国的集中营中被解救出来的。他们来自中欧各地，曾经是平民印刷工、染工、美术家、工程师、雕刻师、金属工人、数学家和摄影师。他们成为了一支顶尖的伪钞制造小组，负责破解英格兰银行的货币。18号和19号营区的印刷车间与营地的其他部分完全隔绝，伪钞制造者与营地里的普通民众之间没有任何接触。

Prisoner 93594, Sally Smolianoff, had a reputation that preceded him.¹⁴ In a bizarre quirk of fate, one that saved his life, an SS officer called Bernhard Krueger, who had previously arrested Smolianoff as part of a criminal crackdown in Berlin, was put in charge of Hitler’s mass forgery scheme. Krueger, the Nazi, knew he needed Smolianoff, the Jew. He found him languishing at Mauthausen and brought him to Sachsenhausen. Smolianoff now found himself the de facto leader of a motley crew of 142 Jewish specialists extracted from the concentration camps of the Third Reich. These men, who came from all over central Europe, had once been civilian printers, dyers, fine artists, engineers, engravers, metalworkers, mathematicians, and photographers. They became the crack counterfeiting team tasked with breaking the Bank of England. The printworks in blocks 18 and 19 were shut off from the rest of the camp and no contact was allowed between the counterfeiters and the general camp population.

斯莫利亚诺夫和整个团队的命运都取决于能否弄清英国人印钞的材料。20世纪20年代初德国的恶性通货膨胀导致德国货币只能用任何能找到的纸张印制。当数十亿毫无价值的马克被印制出来时，谁还会关心纸张的质量呢？但英格兰银行的情况则截然不同。英镑作为近一个世纪以来的全球储备货币，绝非印在普通的劣质纸上。早期的造假者怀疑英镑是用一种只生长在英国殖民地马来亚的芦苇制成的材料印制的。英国纸币的质地确实与众不同。

Smolianoff’s life, and those of the rest of the team, depended on figuring out what material the English were using for their banknotes. Germany’s bouts of hyperinflation in the early 1920s meant that German currency was printed on whatever paper could be sourced. When billions of worthless marks are being printed, who cares about the quality of the paper? But the Bank of England was a different story. Sterling, the global reserve currency for almost a century, wasn’t printed on any old flimsy paper. Earlier forgers suspected it was printed on material made from a type of reed that only grew in the British colony of Malaya. There was something different about the texture of the English note.

经过不懈的测试和撕毁真钞后，造假者们终于发现，英国人使用的是旧衣服的碎布，这些碎布已被制成纸浆。有了这一发现，他们的行动便可开始了。起初，这个秘密作坊只少量制作了五英镑的钞票。这些原型需要进行测试，而还有什么地方比英格兰银行本身更适合测试这些伪钞呢？

After relentless testing and tearing up of real English notes, the counterfeiters twigged that the English were using rags from old clothing that had been pulped. With this knowledge, their operation could begin. Initially, the secret workshop made limited amounts of five-pound notes. These prototypes needed to be tested, and where better to test the forgeries than the Bank of England itself?

一位德国“实业家”来到苏黎世的一家瑞士银行，声称自己从黑市上弄到了一些英镑钞票，并要求银行鉴定其真伪。瑞士官员们立刻拿起放大镜和强光灯仔细检查。经过一番仔细核查，他们宣布这些钞票是真钞。这位“实业家”为了更加确信，又要求瑞士银行家们给英格兰银行发个电报，让他们再次核对钞票的序列号和发行日期。英格兰银行确认这些钞票是真钞。克鲁格欣喜若狂——他的上司，党卫军头目海因里希·希姆莱也同样兴奋。造假者的印刷机开始高速运转。希特勒的计划即将实现，他要用假钞淹没英国，这些假钞的造假如此精妙，连英格兰银行都无法分辨真假。而这一切，距离实现，仅仅几个月的时间。

A German “industrialist” presented himself at a Swiss bank in Zürich claiming he had received some English notes on the black market and asked the bank to vouch for their legitimacy. The Swiss officials went to work with magnifying glasses and high-powered lamps. After careful examination, they declared the notes legitimate. The “industrialist” doubled his bluff and—to be completely sure—asked the Swiss bankers if they’d telegram the Bank of England to double-check the serial numbers and dates of issue. The Bank of England affirmed that the notes were original. Krueger was elated—as was his boss, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. The counterfeiters’ printing presses went into overdrive. The realization of Hitler’s plan to flood Britain with fake notes, forgeries so brilliant that not even the Bank of England could distinguish them from real ones, was mere months away.

集中营的伪钞制造者共印制了134,610,810英镑，相当于当时流通的每十英镑中就有四英镑是伪造的。正如引言中所述，原计划是由德国轰炸机将这些钞票投放到英国上空，但到了1943年，德国的战局恶化，德国空军已无力提供飞机执行轰炸任务。

The concentration camp forgers printed a total of £134,610,810, which amounted to four out of every ten pounds then in circulation. As outlined in the introduction, the plan was for German bombers to drop the notes over Britain, but by 1943, the war situation had deteriorated for Germany, and the Luftwaffe could no longer provide the planes.

党卫军并未气馁，他们另有打算。此时的德国硬通货已接近枯竭。官方汇率为40比1英镑的帝国马克，在黑市上汇率更低，因此不被国际市场接受用于结算贸易。英镑则截然不同。由于英镑是全球储备货币，党卫军可以利用伪造的英镑购买急需的战争物资，并在此过程中中饱私囊。萨克森豪森的精湛伪造技术通过中间人网络渗透到全球货币供应系统中，这些中间人为柏林洗钱。纳粹政权末期催生了护照、签证和新身份的黑市交易，以及……赃物交易市场也随之蓬勃发展。就像如今各种加密货币一样，这些假币也找到了地下市场。萨克森豪森钞票被用来贿赂官员，为逃往阿根廷的纳粹分子提供伪造证件。

Undeterred, the SS had other plans. Germany at this stage was running out of hard currency. The Reichsmark, trading at forty to the pound officially, and much less on the black market, wasn’t accepted for settling trades on the international market. Sterling was another story. As it was the global reserve currency, the SS could use the forged sterling to buy much-needed war materials and in the process line their own pockets. Sachsenhausen’s brilliant forgeries infiltrated the global money supply via a network of middlemen who laundered the cash for Berlin. The dying months of the Nazi regime led to a black market in passports, visas, and new identities, and a thriving market in stolen goods also emerged. Like various cryptocurrencies today, the fake money found a dark market. The Sachsenhausen notes were deployed to bribe officials for fake documents given to Nazis fleeing Europe for Argentina.

有报告称，大量英镑钞票被纳粹使用，这引起了英格兰银行的怀疑；例如，绑架墨索里尼的赎金就是用伪造的英镑支付的。战争结束后，英格兰银行监督销毁了这些钞票，但由于伪造钞票的质量令人担忧，这家位于针线街的老银行决定停止流通所有旧版五英镑钞票，并发行了一批全新的钞票。

Reports to the Bank of England that lots of sterling notes were being used by Nazis aroused suspicion; for example, the ransom for the kidnapped Mussolini was paid for in counterfeited sterling. At the end of the war, the Bank of England oversaw the destruction of these notes, but so worried was the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street about the quality of the forgeries that it retired all its old five-pound notes and introduced an entirely new batch.

试想一下，如果希特勒的钱在1943年从天而降，会发生什么？

Just think what might have happened had Hitler’s money fallen from the heavens in 1943.

啤酒套期保值者

The beer hedger

1992年12月，一长串破旧的二手丰田卡罗拉、福特护卫和菲亚特Mirafiori——这些车都来自中等收入国家——从北爱尔兰一家超市的停车场蜿蜒而下，一直延伸到爱尔兰共和国的边境。在边境北侧，巡逻的英国士兵一脸茫然，不知所措。而南侧的爱尔兰警察（Gardaí）却心知肚明——他们的同事中就有人在排队。当时正值圣诞节，北爱尔兰的酒比爱尔兰共和国便宜，爱尔兰人爱喝酒，而12月又是派对季。正如我们的爱尔兰裔美国表亲所说，真是匪夷所思。

In December 1992, a tailback of battered, secondhand Toyota Corollas, Ford Escorts, and Fiat Mirafioris—the cars of a middle-income country—snaked its way from a supermarket car park in Northern Ireland all the way south to the border of the Irish Republic. On the northern side of the border, bemused British soldiers patrolling their watchtowers weren’t sure what was going on. The Irish police, the Gardai, on the southern side, knew fine well what the story was—some of their colleagues were in the queue. It was Christmas, booze was cheaper in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of Ireland, Irish people like to drink, and December is party time. Go figure, as our Irish American cousins say.

队伍比往常更长。传统上，边境附近的人们会利用酒类套利，因为开车路程短，油费也低，所以觉得值得费这个劲。那一年，成千上万的人急于花掉手中的爱尔兰镑。我们目睹了一场挤兑，起因是即将贬值的谣言。人们惊慌失措，纷纷涌向边境。人们想花钱，而买啤酒成了普通民众对冲汇率风险的一种方式。啤酒对冲策略很实用：趁着英国啤酒也变得便宜之前，用高价的爱尔兰货币购买便宜的英国啤酒。没有什么比本国人民争相抛售更能说明一种货币的不信任了。货币崩溃是一个循序渐进的过程：最初，是那些可能掌握内幕消息的银行家、投资者和投机者开始焦躁不安。等到教师、护士、警察和水管工也开始囤积廉价酒水时，一切都结束了。

The queues were longer than usual. Traditionally, the booze arbitrage was exploited by people close to the border, where the short drive and minimal petrol expense are worth the hassle. That year, thousands more were desperate to spend their Irish punts. We were witnessing a run on the currency, triggered by rumors of an imminent devaluation. Spooked, people wanted to spend, and buying beer was a way for ordinary people to hedge exchange-rate risk. Beer hedging is practical: buy cheap British beer today with expensive Irish money before it too becomes cheap. There is no more damning vote of no confidence in a currency than your own people rushing for the exit. A currency collapse proceeds in stages: initially, it’s the bankers, investors, and speculators, probably with some inside knowledge, who become fidgety. By the time teachers, nurses, police officers, and plumbers are trying to stock up on cheap booze, it’s all over.

1992年的爱尔兰，我们目睹了一场针对一种相对较新的货币的挤兑，这种货币除了国家承诺之外，没有任何其他实物资产支撑。当时，全世界都在使用这种货币，经济学家称之为“法定货币”（源自拉丁语，意为“执行”）。其他人则称之为货币。法定货币与以商品（例如黄金）为支撑的货币之间的关键区别在于，法定货币是国家赋予其合法性的法定货币。这与国家赋予的合法警察部队类似；任何其他国家的警察部队都不能在该国家合法运作。例如，加拿大警察只能在加拿大境内运作——试想一下，如果你穿着加拿大皇家骑警的制服在美国逮捕某人，你会遇到什么情况？

In the Ireland of 1992, we were observing a run on a relatively new type of money, a currency backed by nothing other than the promises of the state. By then, the whole world was using this type of money, which economists call “fiat money” (from the Latin, “let it be done”). Everyone else just calls it money. The key difference between fiat money and money backed by a commodity (gold, for example) is that fiat money is legal tender made legal by the authority of the state alone. It is not unlike a police force that is made legal within a state by the state; no other police force can legally operate in that state. Canadian police, for example, can only operate in Canada—try to arrest someone in America wearing a Mounties uniform and see how far you get.

国家发行的法定货币，其价值由国家的信誉、税收和法律保障。事实上，它与这些机构紧密交织，成为国家的一部分。你无法选择不使用一个国家的法定货币；这是在该国生活的必要条件。作为社会契约的一部分，国家承诺维护其法定货币的价值，这体现在国内通货膨胀和对外汇率两个方面。国家及其机构越强大、越稳健，货币的价值就越高、越可靠。人们信任货币，是因为总体而言，他们信任国家。当然，极左和极右的激进分子不信任国家，但总的来说，无论他们在社交媒体上说什么，大多数公民——在关键时刻——都对自己的国家充满信心。如果你对此有所怀疑，那么当有人闯入你家时，你会打电话给谁：私人治安队还是国家警察？

The legal tender or currency, issued by the state, is backed by the credibility of the state, its tax revenues and laws. In fact, it is so interwoven with these institutions that it is part of the state. You cannot opt out of the legal tender of a country; it is a condition of living there. As part of the social contract, the state undertakes to uphold the value of its legal tender, both internally in terms of inflation and externally in terms of the exchange rate. The stronger and more robust the state and its organs, the stronger and more credible the currency. People trust the currency because, in general, they trust the state. There are of course radicals on the extreme left and extreme right who do not trust the state, but as a general rule, whatever they say on social media, most citizens—when push comes to shove—have confidence in their own state. If you doubt this, who do you call when someone breaks into your home: a private vigilante gang or the state police force?

让我们简要讲述一下世界如何放弃黄金并接受一种新的货币形式，也就是我们今天都在使用的货币。

Let’s briefly tell the story of how the world abandoned gold and embraced a new form of money, the one we all use today.

西贡还是黄金？

Saigon or gold?

在货币发展史上，被广泛接受的法定货币的出现历经漫长岁月。在前几章中，我们已经了解了各种货币体系，这些体系中的货币价值都与某种真实事物息息相关。数千年前，苏美尔舍客勒的价值取决于一小把谷物，而人人都明白这把谷物的价值。吕底亚人使用黄金，其价值源于黄金的装饰性。希腊人偏爱白银而非黄金，而罗马人则将两者结合使用。在但丁笔下的佛罗伦萨，人们创造了传说中的金弗罗林，而伪造者阿达莫大师因篡改这种金币而被判刑。

In the story of money, it has taken a long time for widely accepted fiat money to appear. Over the preceding chapters, we’ve come across various currency arrangements where money’s value is grounded by something real. Thousands of years ago, the value of the Sumerian shekel was determined by a handful of grain and everyone understood the value of that grain. The Lydians used gold, whose value stemmed from its ornamental cachet. The Greeks preferred silver to gold and the Romans used a combination of both. In Dante’s Florence, they created their fabled gold florin, which Maestro Adamo the counterfeiter was condemned for corrupting.

在东亚，中国人引入了纸币（主要以金属和丝绸等商品为支撑），因为纸币比硬币更容易大额流通。几百年后，我们看到了约翰·劳提出的以土地为支撑的货币理念，这是一种巧妙的方法，旨在使长期缺乏黄金的法国摆脱贵金属的束缚。最终，他的货币体系建立在一种失败的、代价高昂的债转股机制之上，这种机制破坏了法国的金融体系，并导致了……法国大革命后期。继塔列朗的指券和乔治·华盛顿的大陆军券惨败之后，整个十九世纪，仅凭政府承诺担保的货币都难以流通。政治革命家很少能成为优秀的银行家。十九世纪是科学发现蓬勃发展的时代，但货币创新却停滞不前。在传统占据主导地位的背景下，达尔文和巴斯德的世纪成为了黄金时代，与两千年前的情况并无太大差别。

In East Asia, the Chinese introduced paper money (largely backed by commodities like metal and silk) because it was easier to use in larger denominations than coins. Fast-forward a few hundred years and we see John Law’s land-backed currency idea, which was an inventive way of weaning perennially gold-starved France off the tyranny of precious metal. In the end, his currency was based on an extravagant debt-for-equity swap that failed, undermined French finance, and contributed to the later French Revolution. Following the disastrous experiments of Talleyrand’s assignats and George Washington’s Continentals, throughout the nineteenth century money backed merely by a government’s promise was a hard sell. Political revolutionaries rarely make good bankers. During the nineteenth century, an era of great scientific discovery, innovation with currency stalled. In a victory for tradition, the century of Darwin and Pasteur was the era of gold, not too dissimilar from 2,000 years earlier.

到世纪末，美国民粹主义者在1896年的总统大选中争论货币究竟应该与稀缺的黄金还是丰富的白银挂钩。第一次世界大战期间，各国为了筹集战争资金而印钞借贷，金本位制被废除。战后，纸币实验因巨额赔款和沉重的战争债务而失败。到了20世纪20年代中期，欧洲的恶性通货膨胀迫使世界再次回归金本位制。最终，当世界经济陷入大萧条的泥潭时，由于无法印钞，重建的金本位制也宣告崩溃。金本位制勉强维持到20世纪30年代中期，最终被罗斯福彻底废除。

By the end of the century, American Populists were fighting the 1896 election over whether money should be tied to scarce gold or plentiful silver. The Gold Standard was abandoned during the First World War as countries printed money and borrowed to fund the war effort. After the war, experiments with paper money ran aground, destroyed by reparations and the overhang of war debts. By the mid-1920s European hyperinflation led the world to commit once again to the discipline of gold. Ultimately, that reconstituted Gold Standard system was undone by an inability to print money when the world slumped and slouched toward the Great Depression. The Gold Standard staggered on until the mid-1930s when Roosevelt abandoned it altogether.

二战期间，美国政府掌控了经济命脉。1946年，美国及其美元占据主导地位，美国再次决定将美元与黄金挂钩，使美元成为全球金融体系的锚点，这种安排可以被视为准金本位制。只要美国政府乐于接受黄金对其施加的货币约束，这种被称为布雷顿森林体系的安排就能有效运作。然而，到了20世纪70年代初，越南战争加剧了美国的财政赤字。坚持准金本位制阻碍了美国为战争筹集资金的努力，最终导致美国财政赤字进一步扩大。美国面临着一个选择：西贡还是黄金。急于扩大军费预算的尼克松总统放弃了金本位制——这是四十年来美国第二次出于权宜之计而放弃金本位制。美联储现在负责印钞和维持美元的价值。美国以浮动汇率取代固定汇率，以灵活汇率取代不可更改汇率，最终将货币价值掌握在能够应对不断变化的经济形势的智慧人类手中，而固定的金属供应则无法做到这一点。美国引领潮流，世界纷纷效仿。到20世纪70年代中期，大多数国家都采用了这种法定货币制度。

During the Second World War, the US state took control of the levers of the economy. With America and the dollar preeminent in 1946, the US decided, once again, to peg the dollar to gold, making the dollar the anchor for the global financial system, in a setup that could be described as a quasi–Gold Standard. This arrangement, known as the Bretton Woods system, worked well as long as the American government was happy with the monetary constraints gold imposed on it. However, by the early 1970s, the American budget deficit was stretched by the Vietnam War. Adherence to the quasi–Gold Standard hampered American efforts to finance the war, and the US was faced with a choice: Saigon or gold. President Richard Nixon, keen to expand the military budget, abandoned the strictures of gold—the second time in forty years that the United States, expediently, dropped the Gold Standard. The Federal Reserve was now responsible for both printing and maintaining the value of the dollar. America replaced the fixed for the variable, the immutable for the flexible, and ultimately placed the value of money in the hands of intelligent humans who can respond and adapt to the evolving economy in a way that a fixed metal supply cannot. Where America led, the world followed. By the mid-1970s, most countries had adopted this fiat regime.

自吕底亚人铸造第一枚硬币以来，法定货币是货币领域最重大的创新。在一段较为稳定的时期内，各国及其公民真正摆脱了贵金属的束缚。鉴于本书着重探讨了货币对我们生活的变革性影响，法定货币时代恰逢世界经济史上最强劲的扩张也就不足为奇了。金本位制时期，全球平均年增长率约为1.0%至1.5%，而在过去五十多年的法定货币时代，全球GDP年均增长率约为2%至3%。法定货币时代的增长率不仅是金本位制时期的两倍，而且覆盖面更广，惠及更多国家和地区的人口也更多。给人们金钱，从经济角度来看，奇迹就会发生。

Fiat money is the most significant innovation in money since the Lydians minted their first coin. For the first sustained period, countries, and of course their citizens, were truly free from the brace of precious metal. Given that this book has focused on the transformative impact of money on our lives, it will come as no surprise that this era of fiat money coincided with the most vigorous expansion the world economy has ever seen. Average global growth during the Gold Standard was about 1.0–1.5 percent per year, while during the past fifty odd years of fiat, the global GDP growth rate averaged around 2–3 percent per year. Not only was the growth rate in the fiat era double that of the Gold Standard but it was far more broadly based involving far more people in far more countries. Give people money and, in economic terms, magic happens.

在经济增长时期，将货币供应量限制在黄金等固定资产上，会自动产生通缩效应。固定货币供应量，就像固定任何供应一样，会使那些已经拥有货币的人受益，而使那些没有货币的人受损。随着人们收入的增长，对货币的需求也会增加，货币价格也会随之上涨（除非供应量做出相应调整）。当货币价格上涨时，就会出现通缩。物价上涨意味着其他所有东西相对于货币的价格都会下降。这意味着，你我这样的人，为了获得固定的金钱，就必须出售更多的东西。仔细想想，我们大多数人都在出售什么？我们出售的是时间和才能。我们用时间换取工资。如果我们都在追求固定的金钱，我们就必须出售更多的时间才能得到它。在现实世界中，这意味着收入减少。如果人们的工资开始下降，物价也会相应下降。用不了多久，人们就会推迟今天的消费，囤积资金，希望明天能买到更多便宜货——更低的价格。

In a growing economy, limiting the money supply to something fixed such as gold has an automatically deflationary effect. Fixing the money supply, like fixing any supply, benefits those who already have it and penalizes those who don’t. As people’s incomes rise, the demand for money goes up and so too (unless supply responds) does its price. When the price of money goes up, it means the price of everything else goes down relative to money. This implies that people, you and me, will have to sell more of everything to get a fixed amount of money. When you think about it, what are most of us selling? We are selling our time and our talent. We are selling our time in exchange for a wage. If we are all chasing a fixed amount of money, we have to sell more of our time to get it. In the real world that means taking a pay cut. If people’s wages start to fall, prices will fall accordingly. It won’t be too long before people postpone spending today and hoard their money, hoping for yet more bargains—lower prices—tomorrow.

很多时候，放弃一个糟糕的想法往往比采纳一个好的想法更难。金本位制或准金本位制就是这样一个糟糕的想法，它持续了太久。法定货币体系设定了适度的通胀目标，因为小幅通胀比通货紧缩更容易应对。通货紧缩是固定商品货币体系固有的，而适度通胀则是法定货币体系固有的，因为货币供应量并非固定不变，它可以随着经济增长和货币需求的增长而持续扩张。经验表明，政府要启动一个停滞不前的通货紧缩经济比减缓一个蓬勃发展的通胀经济要困难得多。从某种意义上说，可控的小规模通胀对债务的作用就像忏悔对罪过的作用：偶尔给予一点宽恕。如果你借了钱，通胀会让你更容易偿还债务，这提供了一种，比如说，更宽容、更符合天主教教义的选择。与黄金挂钩的货币的通货紧缩会无情地惩罚债务人，相比之下，这可以被视为一种更根本、更注重清算债务的债务处理方式。

As is so often the case, abandoning a bad idea can often be more difficult than adopting a good one. The Gold Standard or quasi-gold standard was one of these bad ideas that clung on for far too long. The fiat system comes with modest inflation targets because a little bit of inflation is less challenging than deflation. Deflation is built into a fixed commodity-based money, while moderate inflation is built into a fiat system because the money supply, not being fixed, can expand continuously as the economy grows and the demand for money grows too. Experience had shown governments that it is harder to kick-start a moribund deflationary economy than to slow down a bustling inflationary one. In a sense, manageable small-scale inflation does for debt what confession does for sin: a little bit of forgiveness, every now and then. If you borrow, inflation makes it easier to pay back debt, offering, let’s say, a more lenient, Catholic option. Deflation in a currency linked to gold punishes debtors mercilessly, and can, in contrast, be seen as a more fundamentalist, day-of-reckoning approach to debt.

骑师骑着两匹马

A jockey riding two horses

货币的灵活性反映了经济的健康状况。如果货币贬值，则意味着经济整体存在一些根本性问题，或者预计会出现问题。当货币的信誉受到质疑，国家赋予货币的价值与普通民众认为其价值之间出现差距时，往往会出现资金外流。货币就像一个测谎仪。正如我们所见，中央银行可以印钞的规模没有上限，印钞的规模也没有上限。这是一种平衡，受到一些参数的制约，但其根本在于保持通货膨胀率稳定且低。如果中央银行希望减少流通中的货币量，它会提高利率，人们就会减少借贷，增加储蓄，从而对货币流通量起到调节作用。

A flexible currency reveals the health of an economy. If it is falling, something fundamental is going wrong or expected to go wrong with the economy at large. When a currency’s credibility comes into question, and a gap opens up between the value the state puts on the currency and the value the average punter believes it has, there tends to be movement of money out of the country. The currency acts like a lie detector. As we have seen, there is no limit on how much a central bank can print. Nor is there any limit on how little it might print. It is a balancing act, hemmed in by a few parameters but anchored by the promise to keep the rate of inflation stable and low. If the central bank wants less money knocking around, it will raise the rate of interest and people will borrow less and save more, exerting a moderating influence on the amount of money in circulation.

1992年，我亲眼目睹了人们对货币失去信心的后果。自那以后，在中央银行的工作经历一直影响着我对货币、货币政策和货币经济学的思考。我从那场危机中学到的第一课是：在货币问题上，人们比中央银行家们想象的要聪明得多。你不可能永远蒙蔽他们。

In 1992, I witnessed from the inside what happens when people lose faith in a currency. The experience of working in a central bank has guided my thinking on money, monetary policy, and monetary economics ever since. The first lesson I learned from that crisis is that, when it comes to money, people are smarter than central bankers think they are. You can’t fool them for long.

到20世纪90年代初，欧洲大多数法定货币都与德国马克挂钩。战后西德是管理法定货币的典范：既维持了货币的价值，又确保了足够的货币流通以维持经济运转。鉴于德国在20世纪20年代经历了恶性通货膨胀，新成立的德意志联邦共和国誓言永不再打破中央银行与人民之间的联系。对于战后德国而言，西德人、稳定的货币和稳定的社会被视为一体三者。因此，西德在欧洲的通货膨胀率控制方面表现最佳。秉持着“既然无法战胜他们，不如加入他们”的策略，经过一番深思熟虑，并在1982年经历了法郎挤兑之后，大多数西欧国家最终选择将本国货币汇率与德国马克挂钩。一旦一个国家的汇率与西德的汇率挂钩，它就无法以比德国更快的速度印钞。如果印钞速度超过德国，就会有更多本国货币流通，从而导致其价格下跌。如果本国货币价格下跌，其中央银行就不得不提高利率，吸引更多资金来推高本币汇率，以维持固定汇率。

By the early 1990s, most of Europe’s fiat currencies were tied to the German currency, the deutsche mark. Postwar West Germany was the exemplar of how to manage a fiat currency: maintain the value of money, and yet ensure that there is still enough around to keep the economy ticking over. Following the German experience with hyperinflation in the 1920s, the new Federal Republic of Germany vowed never again to break the bond between the central bank and the people. For postwar West Germans, stable money and a stable society were seen as two sides of the same coin. As a result, West Germany had the best record on inflation in Europe. Adopting an “if you can’t beat them you might as well join them” approach, after much soul-searching and a run on the French franc in 1982, most of the western European countries elected to tie their exchange rate to the deutsche mark. Once a country’s exchange rate was fixed against West Germany’s, it could not print money at a faster rate than the Germans did. If you did print at a faster rate than the Germans, there would be more of your currency floating about and its price would therefore fall. If the price of your currency fell, your central bank would have to raise interest rates to attract more money to push up your currency and maintain the fixed exchange rate.

这样一来，通过将汇率与西德汇率挂钩，就能维持本国货币的内外价值。长期如此，人们就会相信本国货币确实与德国货币一样好，从而获得更低的利率。其目的在于降低利率，而前提是假设德国利率会始终保持相对低位，因为德国的通货膨胀率也会保持相对低位。然而，没有人预料到柏林墙会在1989年11月9日倒塌。德国统一推高了德国利率，因为自二战结束以来，德国首次开始大量举债。此外，尽管东德马克的实际价值远低于德国马克，但德国联邦银行仍提高了利率，以抵消将东德马克与德国马克1:1兑换的政治决定所带来的通胀后果。由于所有欧洲货币都与德国马克挂钩，德国利率的上升推高了其他所有国家的利率，引发了西欧的危机。

In this way, by tying the exchange rate to West Germany’s, both the external and internal value of the country’s money is maintained. Do this long enough and people believe that your money is indeed as good as the Germans’, and you are rewarded with lower interest rates. The aim of the game was lower interest rates predicated on the assumption that German interest rates would always remain relatively low because German inflation would also remain relatively low. Nobody expected the Berlin Wall to fall on November 9, 1989. The reunification of the country drove German interest rates upward because Germany, for the first time since the end of the war, began to borrow heavily. In addition, the Bundesbank raised interest rates to offset the inflationary consequences of the political decision to convert the East German ostmark 1:1 with the deutsche mark, despite its “true” value being only a fraction of this. Because all European currencies were pegged to the deutsche mark, higher German interest rates pushed up the interest rates of all other countries, prompting crises across western Europe.

当时，英国正遭受上世纪80年代末房地产市场崩盘的余波。英国的资产负债表脆弱不堪，无法承受更高的利率。1992年9月16日，英镑暴跌，并混乱地脱离了以德国为中心的汇率体系，这一事件被称为“黑色星期三”。由于不再需要维持与德国的汇率联系，英国的利率可以随着货币价值的下降而下降。货币贬值是法定货币体系应对不稳定的一种方式。这与金本位制形成鲜明对比，在金本位制下，货币不会贬值，所有对诸如房地产泡沫破裂等经济冲击的调整都必须通过失业、违约和破产来吸收。法定货币具有灵活性，这种灵活性，与基于商品的货币的笨拙性相比，意味着经济衰退往往会更浅、更短，而这正是英国在上世纪90年代初所需要的。

At the time, the UK was suffering from the aftershock of the late-1980s housing market collapse. British balance sheets were fragile and couldn’t handle higher interest rates. On September 16, 1992, sterling devalued and crashed out chaotically from the German-centered exchange rate system in an event known as Black Wednesday. Without the requirement any longer to maintain the link with Germany, British interest rates could fall along with the value of the currency. A falling currency is how a fiat system deals with instability. Contrast this with a Gold Standard where the currency cannot fall and all the adjustment for an economic shock such as a housing bust must be absorbed through unemployment, defaults, and bankruptcies. Fiat money is flexible money and this flexibility, in contrast to the clumsiness of commodity-based money, means that recessions will tend to be shallower and shorter, which is what Britain needed in the early 1990s.

但英国的举动让爱尔兰这个小国的处境变得极其艰难。在货币问题上，小国是规则的接受者而非制定者，因此它们的政策必须考虑到邻国的动向。通常情况下，这些邻国根本意识不到它们的单方面决策会给周边地区带来多少不眠之夜。小国的货币政策十分棘手——既要平衡资金的流入和流出，又要管理国内利率和汇率，同时还要确保通货膨胀保持稳定。鉴于爱尔兰与英国之间由来已久的经济联系，以及其希望更靠近欧洲大陆的战略政治诉求，爱尔兰就像一个骑师同时骑着两匹马：一匹是英国的马，另一匹是德国的马。只要两匹马朝着同一个方向前进，骑师的处境勉强还能维持，但当两匹马开始分道扬镳时，骑师的处境就变得岌岌可危了。这令人不安，甚至可能痛苦不堪。由于预期会出现效仿性的货币贬值，资金纷纷流出爱尔兰，全然不顾爱尔兰当局的任何辩解。

But Britain’s move made little Ireland’s position extremely difficult. When it comes to money, small countries are rule takers not rule makers, so their policies must take into account what larger neighbors might be doing. Typically, these bigger neighbors have no idea how many sleepless nights their unilateral decisions are creating in the immediate region. Monetary policy in small countries is tricky—balancing money flowing in and out of the country, managing local interest rates and the exchange rate, while all the time making sure inflation remains stable. With Ireland’s historic economic links to the UK, and its strategic political desire to be closer to the continent, Ireland became like a jockey riding two horses: the British horse and the German horse. As long as the two horses were traveling in the same direction, the jockey’s position was just about tenable, but when the horses started to move away from each other, the jockey’s nether regions became very uncomfortable, potentially excruciating. Expecting a copycat devaluation, money flowed out of Ireland, irrespective of what any Irish authority pleaded.

爱尔兰央行没有接受不可避免的现实，而是决定孤注一掷，动用所有国家储备购买无人问津的爱尔兰镑。为了遏制资金外流，央行还将利率提高到惊人的101%。如此高的利率必然导致经济衰退，也使得货币贬值的可能性大大增加。普通民众很快意识到发生了什么，陷入恐慌，为了抢在当局之前，纷纷驾车越过边境，去购买廉价的吉尼斯黑啤过圣诞节！一个月后，也就是1993年1月，爱尔兰货币贬值了。

Rather than accept the inevitable, the Irish central bank decided to fight by spending all the country’s reserves buying punts that no one wanted. The central bank also increased interest rates to an incredible 101 percent to stanch the outflow of money. Rates of interest like this guaranteed a recession, making a devaluation even more likely. The ordinary people twigged what was going on, panicked, and, staying ahead of the authorities, jumped in their cars and headed across the border to buy their cheap Guinness for Christmas! A month later, in January 1993, Ireland devalued its currency.

如果说我从这次货币危机中学到的第一课是民众比央行官员们自认为的更聪明，那么第二课就是货币是国际性的——它能跨越国界。各国都希望自己的货币具有主权，但货币是短暂的，它会流动。以爱尔兰为例，岛上有宪法规定的边界，但货币却无视它，这种渗透能力是货币的一个基本特征，即使是那些掌管货币的人也很少意识到这一点。这场危机的另一个后果是，在我心中埋下了一颗隐隐作痛的种子：如果这些央行官员——我的上司们——在面对货币挑战时都显得茫然无措，那么他们还会误诊什么呢？

If the first lesson I learned from this currency crisis is that the people are smarter than the central bankers think they are, the second lesson is that money is international—it finds its way around borders. Countries want their money to be sovereign, but money is ephemeral, it moves. In the Irish case, we have a constitutional border on the island, but money ignores it, and this ability to permeate is a fundamental aspect of money, rarely appreciated even by those who are in charge of it. One further result of the crisis was a small seed of niggling doubt in my mind: If these central bankers—my bosses—appeared at sea when faced with a currency challenge, what else might they be misdiagnosing?

金钱的祭司们

The high priests of money

在那场货币危机发生不到二十年后，爱尔兰和西方世界的大部分地区一样，经历了毁灭性的……银行业崩溃。掌管国家货币的竟然是同一批人。短短十六年间，他们就主导了两场巨大的货币危机，这表明他们对货币的本质和运作方式的理解可能并不牢固。爱尔兰央行官员并非孤例；他们隶属于一个更大的集团，一个全球性的金融精英阶层。难道整个全球金融精英阶层在货币问题上都错了吗？

Less than two decades after that currency crisis, Ireland, along with much of the Western world, experienced a devastating banking crash. The same gang was in charge of the nation’s money. Within the space of sixteen years, they had managed to preside over two massive monetary crises, suggesting that their grasp of exactly what money is and how it works might not be that solid. The Irish central bankers were not alone; they were part of a greater club, a global priesthood. Could the entire worldwide clerisy be wrong about money?

作为一名年轻的经济学家，我先是在中央银行工作，后来又在投资银行任职，当时我并没有完全意识到世界正在步入一种全新的货币关系。我们正在进入技术官僚时代——他们是现代的高级祭司或婆罗门。就像在古老的种姓制度社会中一样，婆罗门阶层是圣贤阶层，他们负责解释规则和制定法律。

As a young economist, first in the central bank and later in investment banking, I didn’t quite appreciate that the world was entering a new relationship with money. We were entering the age of the technocrats—modern-day high priests or Brahmins. As in older caste-based societies, the Brahmin class is the sage caste, those who interpret the rules and set the laws.

正如我们所见，货币史上最具争议的问题之一便是货币本位制，即衡量货币这种抽象概念并赋予其物质价值的现实世界标尺。由于货币即权力，因此，无论是古代苏美尔的粮食本位制、吕底亚和雅典的铸币砝码、早期罗马的盐本位制、约翰·劳试图将法国货币价值与殖民地财富挂钩的努力，还是由私人中央银行设定的古典金本位制，货币本位制始终是人们关注的焦点。当中央银行被赋予创造货币的非凡权力时，掌管这些机构的人也掌握了巨大的权力。

As we have seen, one of the most contentious issues throughout monetary history is the monetary standard, the real-world object against which this ephemeral abstraction called money is measured and given material hard value. Because money is power, this monetary anchor—and who gets to decide it—has again and again, been a central concern whether it was the grain standard in ancient Sumer, the mint’s weights of Lydia and Athens, the salt standard in early Rome, John Law’s efforts to tie the value of French money to the bounty of the colonies, or indeed the classical Gold Standard set by private central banks. When a central bank is bestowed with the extraordinary ability to create money, the people who run these places also wield enormous power.

过去五十年左右，自布雷顿森林体系终结以来，货币的现实基础一直是代表一篮子商品价格的变化——即通货膨胀——而这一价格目标由民选政府及其货币机构，即公共中央银行设定。事实上，这种新的通胀目标制对经济学家来说是一件好事。可以说，法定货币体系为一群新兴的经济学家——所谓的美联储观察员——创造了高效的就业机会，更不用说中央银行内部的职业发展机会了。而我，作为一名初出茅庐的“婆罗门”（指经济拮据的经济学家），也获得了其中一份工作！

In the past fifty years or so, since the end of the Bretton Woods system, the real-world underpinning for money has been the change in the price of a representative basket of goods—inflation—set by democratically elected governments and their monetary institution, the public central bank. This new system of inflation targeting has been a boon for economists, in fact you could say that the fiat currency system was a highly effective job-creation scheme for a new subgroup of economists, the so-called Fed watchers, not to mention career opportunities within the central banks themselves. And I got one of these jobs—as a novice Brahmin!

在中央银行——某种意义上的货币圣殿——内部，婆罗门祭司主持着货币铸造的仪式。中央银行依据政府特许状运作：它们印制货币，而货币的合法性则源于政府颁布法令，规定这种货币是我们缴纳税款的依据。这种缴纳税款的能力至关重要，因为如果没有这项功能，你口袋里的钞票就只是一张废纸而已。

Within the central bank, a sort of monetary tabernacle, the Brahmins perform the rituals whereby money is fashioned. The central banks operate under government charter: they print the currency and it is given legitimacy by the fact that the government decrees this currency is the money we pay taxes in. This ability to pay taxes is key because, without this attribute, the notes in your pocket would be just paper.

与通过选举产生或下台的政客不同，技术官僚无需对选民负责。以欧洲中央银行为例，它完全独立，却又带有浓厚的政治色彩。由于金钱驱动经济，而经济又驱动政治周期，因此金钱——从定义上讲——就是政治性的。如今，中央银行家的专业能力支撑着世界金融体系。在与媒体和金融市场进行的一场猫鼠游戏中，中央银行的“婆罗门”们不断伪装和混淆视听；他们的言论常常被形容为“德尔斐神谕”，如同古希腊以谜语预测未来的神谕一般。他们的观点中也包含着强烈的道德评判成分。例如，他们会用“失控”或“失控”来形容经济，而声誉和信誉也因此岌岌可危。凭借着“资本自由流动”的理念，中央银行家们确保了全球资金的流动，使全球经济比以往任何时候都更加一体化。由于资金可以畅通无阻地跨越各大洲，世界一个地区发生的事件会立即对其他地区产生影响。这是不可能的。想象一下，如果没有法定货币在全球自由流通，全球化会是什么样子。

Unlike politicians, who are voted in or out, the technocrats are not accountable to the electorate. Take, for example, the European Central Bank. It is entirely independent yet utterly political. Because money drives the economy and the economy drives the political cycle, money is—by definition—political. Today, the professional competence of central bankers underpins the world’s financial architecture. In an intellectual game of cat and mouse with the press and the financial markets, the central bank Brahmins disguise and obfuscate; the pronouncements of central bankers have often been described as Delphic, after the ancient Greek oracle that predicted the future in riddles. There is also a strong element of moral judgment in their opinions. For example, economies can be described as delinquent or out of control, with reputations and credibility at stake. With their gospel of free capital movements, central bankers ensure that flows of money around the world make the global economy more integrated than ever. As money travels unhindered across continents, events in one part of the world have an immediate impact on other regions. It is impossible to imagine globalization without fiat money flowing effortlessly around the globe.

法定货币时代带来了前所未有的繁荣，这与全球不平等现象的显著减少以及科技创新蓬勃发展的时期不谋而合。例如，如果没有货币，中国经济就不会如此蓬勃发展。试想一下，如果拥有70亿人口的全球经济试图在与金属挂钩的货币体系下发展，将会是怎样一番景象。自20世纪70年代以来，全球识字率显著提高，女性识字率从61%上升到83%，男性识字率从77%上升到90%。在被定义为低收入的国家，失学女童的比例从准金本位制时期最后一年的72%下降到2016年的23%。男孩的相应数据分别为56%和18% ^。

The era of fiat money has produced the most extraordinary prosperity, coinciding with both a material decline in global inequality and a unique period of technological innovation. The Chinese economy, for example, would not have burgeoned had it been stymied by an absence of money. Imagine if the global economy of 7 billion people was trying to grow under a monetary system tethered to a piece of metal. Since the 1970s, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in global literacy from 61 percent to 83 percent for women and from 77 percent to 90 percent for men. For countries defined as low-income, the percentage of girls not in school dropped from 72 percent in the last year of the quasi-gold standard to 23 percent by 2016. The equivalent figures for boys are 56 percent and 18 percent.¹

随着教育水平的提高，女性更有可能自主控制生育，自金本位制终结以来，低收入国家每位母亲的平均子女数已从5个下降到2.4个。在全球法定货币体系下，更高的经济增长率和更少的子女带来了人均收入的激增。20世纪70年代，全球40%的人口生活在世界银行的贫困线以下；如今，这一比例已降至10%。人类平均预期寿命从20世纪50年代末到70年代初有所提高，而婴儿死亡率则大幅下降。数亿人的生活质量在旧金属货币时代和新法定货币时代之间发生了翻天覆地的变化。显然，相关性并不等同于因果关系，从技术到医疗、卫生、教育发展和公共政策等诸多因素都可能解释这些变化，但这些进步都发生在全球法定货币体系的框架下。我们已经我们在法定货币体系下已经超过五十年了，情况一直在改善。这就是进步的模样。

With education, women are more likely to control their own fertility and, since the end of gold, the average number of children per mother in low-income countries has fallen from 5 to 2.4. Under the global fiat regime, higher economic growth rates and fewer children has resulted in a surge in income per head. In the 1970s, 40 percent of the world’s population lived under the World Bank’s poverty line; today it is 10 percent. Average human life expectancy has risen from the late fifties to the early seventies, while infant mortality has plummeted. The contrast in quality of life for hundreds of millions of people between the old world of metal-based money and the new world of fiat money has been extraordinary. Obviously, correlation is not causation and a myriad of reasons might explain these changes—from technology to medicine, sanitation, education drives, and public policy—but these advances have occurred under the umbrella of global fiat money. We have been in this fiat money regime for over fifty years and things have been improving. This is what progress looks like.

货币与金融

Currency vs finance

法定货币是世界上最具解放性和神奇性的技术之一，它让更多人比以往任何时候都更容易获得资金，并推动经济腾飞。但法定货币也是一个巨大的幻象，它建立在信任之上，既是力量的源泉，也是脆弱的根源。这个体系的核心是中央银行家，这些“婆罗门”利用媒体、智库和政策会议来使其他人接受他们的货币理念。他们声称控制着货币——但他们真的能吗？

Fiat money is one of the world’s most liberating and marvelous technologies, giving more people access to money than ever before, and allowing economies to take off. But fiat money is also a great illusion and, being based on trust, it is a source of fragility as well as strength. At the center of this system are the central bankers, the Brahmins who deploy the media, think tanks, and policy gatherings to convert others to their philosophy of money. They claim to control money—but do they really?

自库什姆和苏美尔时代起，货币就分为两种：一种是以谷物等形式存在的货币，我们可以称之为商品货币；另一种是以合约形式存在的、更为短暂的货币，我们可以称之为金融。在金融交易中，我们彼此欠款，将金额记录在石板上，并在约定的日期结算合约，然后重新开始。只有在结算合约时才需要实际的货币——商品货币。吕底亚人发行金币，既是为了结算合约，也是为了日常交易。他们发行小额硬币用于交易，并将贵重的金币用于在合约期满时清偿未偿债务和信用。他们还制定了法律来规范商业合约，从而构建了一个由义务、承诺和反承诺构成的复杂网络，并由相应的规则加以约束。

Ever since the time of Kushim and the Sumerians, there have been two types of money: money in the form of grain, for instance, which we can call commodity money, and a more ephemeral type of money in the form of a contract, which we can call finance. In finance, I owe you, you owe me, we write the amounts down on a slate and on an appointed day we clear the contract and start again. It is only at the point of clearing the contract that actual currency—commodity money—is required. The Lydians introduced their gold coins as much to clear these contracts as to trade day-to-day. They introduced smaller coins to trade, and kept their valuable gold coins to square outstanding debts and credit at the end of the contract period. They also established laws to govern commercial contracts, creating a web of obligations, commitments, and countercommitments, governed by rules.

数千年来，我们对货币的观察表明，货币的这种双重性质不断演变：货币既是流通货币，又是锚定货币。货币的本质可以是黄金或国家担保之类的东西；也可以是金融，由商业银行创造，并受商业法约束。创造信贷就像酒吧招待给你开账单一样。你愉快地喝了一整晚，最后结账。银行信贷的运作方式与之类似，但规模要大得多。我们所看到的货币创新大多源于信贷领域——或者更广义地说，源于金融领域。佛罗伦萨的商人银行家们用复式记账法完善并扩展了信贷体系，到了荷兰和商业中心阿姆斯特丹，商业贷款急剧增长，推动贸易经济的不再是以贵金属为支撑的货币，而是金融。

Over the thousands of years we have been observing money, we see this dual nature evolve: money as currency, anchored by something like gold or the guarantee of a state; and money as finance, created by commercial banks and governed by commercial law. Creating credit is what your barman does when he opens a tab. You drink happily all evening and the bill is settled at the end of the night. Bank credit operates like this, but on a much grander scale. Most of the innovations we have seen in money are innovations in the world of credit—or the area broadly known as finance. Refined and expanded by the Florentine merchant bankers with their double-entry balance sheets, by the time we get to the Dutch and mercantile Amsterdam, commercial lending is increasing dramatically and it is finance, rather than currency anchored by metal, that fuels the trading economy.

如今，流通货币——例如你口袋里的现金——约占货币供应总量的10%；金融及其各种表现形式——例如你的抵押贷款——构成了其余部分。金融在现代货币发展史上的主导地位意义重大。当你去银行申请汽车贷款时，银行凭空创造出货币，并将其存入你的账户。这种新货币昨天并不存在；今天它就存在了。它并非由中央银行创造，而是由商业银行创造。这种货币，或者说信贷，是金融的润滑剂，受合同约束。金融并非由中央银行决定，尽管中央银行希望控制它。金融是一种能够推动经济和社会发展的能量，有时甚至会使其偏离正轨，从而导致繁荣或萧条。中央银行深知自己要为金融领域的错误负责，因此它试图建立一系列保障措施，例如要求贷款机构在中央银行存放存款，以确保金融体系的稳定运行。但金融是一种难以驾驭的金钱形式，不容易加以约束。

Today, currency—such as the cash in your pocket—amounts to around 10 percent of all the money supply; finance in all its various manifestations—your mortgage, for instance—makes up the rest. The pre-eminence of finance in the story of modern money has significant implications. When you go to the bank and ask for a loan for a car, the bank creates the money out of nothing, and puts it into your account. The new money didn’t exist yesterday; today it does. It has been created not by the central bank, but by a commercial bank. This money, or credit, is the lubricant of finance, governed by contracts. Finance is not determined by the central bank, although the central bank would like to control it. Finance is an energy that can propel the economy and society, sometimes off its axis, whether that means a boom or a bust. The central bank knows that it is on the hook for the mistakes of finance, so it tries to set up a series of guardrails, such as a requirement for lenders to keep deposits with the central bank, to keep finance on side. But finance is an unruly version of money, not easily disciplined.

难道传统的经济观点对中央银行和商业银行之间的关系理解有误吗？

Could it be that the traditional economic view of the relationship between the central bank and the commercial banks is the wrong way around?

推还是拉？

Push or pull?

谈到法定货币体系，经济学家通常认为，中央银行创造货币，印钞，然后将其发放给商业银行——商业银行再利用这些资金进行杠杆操作，最终将资金注入经济体系。这种解释看似合乎逻辑，并将中央银行置于体系的核心，使其能够决定货币流通量。这套理论令人安心，因为总有人在掌控一切。这也是经济学家在大学里学习的理论。我们不妨称之为“推动论”。经济所需的货币量由那些无所不知的“货币大臣”运用复杂的经济模型来决定。这些货币从中央银行“推动”到商业银行，最终流入经济体系。当你在媒体上读到有关美联储的报道时，你会感到安心，因为你读到的是一个掌握货币政策大权的机构。

When talking about the fiat regime, economists have typically contended that the central bank creates the money, prints it, and gives it to the commercial banks—and from there the commercial banks leverage this amount, pushing money into the economy. This interpretation seems logical, and it places the central bank at the center of the system, determining how much money is in circulation. It’s a reassuring story, because someone is in charge. It is the story economists learn in university. Let’s call it the “push story.” The amount of money the economy requires is determined by the all-knowing high priests, using complex economic models. That amount of money is pushed from the central bank to the commercial banks and then pushed into the economy. And when you read about the US Federal Reserve in the media, you are reassured that you are reading about an institution that has its hand on the monetary tiller.

但作为一名曾在中央银行和大型商业银行工作过的经济学家，我不确定这是否是货币体系的运作方式。教科书上或许是这样描述的，但现实世界并非如此。我目睹过各种危机，在这些危机中，中央银行不仅没有掌控局面，而且似乎对正在发生的事情一无所知。我认为货币的运作方式恰恰相反。我们不妨将这种模式称为“拉动模式”，在这种模式下，中央银行并非向经济注入资金，而是被经济及其对资金的需求所吸引，而这种需求又是由商业银行来激发和满足的。

But having worked as an economist, both in a central bank and large commercial banks, I’m not sure that’s how the system operates. It may work like that in textbooks, but in reality the world functions differently. Having seen various crises where the central bank is not only not in charge, but doesn’t appear to have a clue what is going on, I believe money works the opposite way. Let’s call this other story the “pull story,” where the central bank is not pushing money into the economy, but is being pulled by the economy and the economy’s appetite for money, which is whetted and served by commercial banks.

商业银行就像特许经营商；它们在中央银行的许可下运营，根据需求创造货币。我​​们在佛罗伦萨接触到的一项货币创新——复式记账法——是理解银行如何创造货币的关键——每一项资产都对应着一项负债。你想买房，于是去银行申请抵押贷款。银行无需征求你的许可即可创造货币；在自身的信贷委员会决定你是否符合贷款条件后，银行就会创造新的货币。这笔贷款发放给你，并支付给房屋的卖方。在银行的资产负债表上，有一项负债：新创造的存款，你将其转移给房屋的卖方。同时，还有一项新创造的资产：你获得的贷款，以房屋的产权作为抵押，你需要支付利息。经过这一系列操作后，仍然只有一套房子，现在归你所有，但房屋的卖方现在拥有了一笔由银行发放给你的贷款所创造的存款。银行杠杆的神奇之处在于，你获得了房子，卖方获得了现金，而银行则同时获得了一项新的资产（给你的贷款）和一项新的负债（现在归房屋卖方所有的定金）。

The commercial banks are like franchisees; operating under license from the central bank, they create money in response to demand. An innovation in money that we met way back in Florence, double-entry bookkeeping, is key to understanding how banks create money—every asset has a corresponding liability. You want to buy a house and go to the bank for a mortgage. The bank doesn’t ask for permission to create that money; it generates new money after its own credit committee decides whether or not you are good for the loan. This is a loan to you and it pays the seller of the house. On the bank’s balance sheet, there is a liability: the newly created deposit, which you transfer to the seller of the house. And there is also a newly created asset: the loan to you, collateralized by the deeds of the house, on which you pay interest. After this bit of alchemy, there is still only one house, which you now own, but the seller of the house now owns a deposit created by the loan the bank has made to you. The magic of bank leverage is that you get the house, the seller gets the cash, and the bank has both a new asset (the loan to you) and a new liability (the deposit now owned by the seller of the house).

银行可以反复这样做。事实上，由于银行的盈利能力取决于其资产收益，因此追求利润最大化的银行有动机不断放贷。此外，如果老板的奖金与银行股价挂钩，管理层就总会有动机尽可能多地放贷，即使这种做法变得鲁莽。这就是为什么有些人会得出这样的结论：抢劫银行最简单的方法就是经营好它——银行的腐败是由内部因素造成的。

The bank can do this over and over again. Indeed, as the profitability of the bank is based on income from its assets, there is an incentive for the profit-maximizing bank to keep lending. Additionally, if the bonus of the boss is linked to the bank’s share price, there will always be a management incentive to lend as much as possible, even if this becomes reckless, which is why some might conclude the easiest way to rob a bank is to run it—banks go bad from the inside out.

与此同时，货币是由中央银行创造的。它以实物形式存在——也就是我们钱包里和街边收银机里的纸币和硬币——也以电子形式存在，商业银行用它来结算彼此之间的支付。那么，这种电子货币是如何产生的呢？

Currency, meanwhile, is money created by the central bank. It comes in physical form—the notes and coins we keep in our wallets and tills on the high street—and in electronic form, used by the commercial banks to settle payments between one another. How is this electronic currency created?

美国政府借款时，会发行称为国债的借据，这些国债通常会出售给商业银行和金融市场。中央银行也可以在公开市场上购买国债。购买国债时，会在美联储为商业银行创造一笔存款。这些存款被称为中央银行储备，它们以电子货币的形式存在。这些电子现金储备只能由中央银行创造，也只能由商业银行持有，并用于结算商业银行之间的交易。它们可以对商业银行的借贷起到一定的约束作用：商业银行在美联储的储备越多，其借贷能力就越强。银行还可以将这些储备从美联储兑换成实物货币——美元，用于自动取款机。同时，银行必须在美联储保留一定数量的储备以应对紧急情况——尽管正如我们将看到的，在危机发生时，这些储备往往远远不够。

When the US government borrows money, it issues IOUs called treasuries, which are typically sold to commercial banks and the financial markets. The central bank can also buy treasuries in the open market. When it does so, it creates a deposit for commercial banks at the Fed. These deposits are known as central bank reserves, and they consist of electronic currency. These electronic cash reserves are created only by the central bank, and are held only by commercial banks, and they are used to settle transactions between the latter. They can act as a constraint on commercial bank lending and borrowing: the more reserves a commercial bank has at the Fed, the more lending and borrowing it can execute. Banks can also convert these reserves into physical currency, fresh dollars, from the Fed to stuff in the ATMs. Meanwhile, they must hold on to a certain amount of reserves at the Fed in case of an emergency—although, as we will see, it’s rarely enough when things go wrong.

在法定货币体系中，政府是国债的发行者，中央银行是货币的印刷者。由于两者都是公共机构，这就相当于政府的左手借贷给右手，商业银行则作为中间人。但这些商业银行并非国家机构的一部分。中央银行试图监管商业银行，其手段是强制要求它们提供国债作为抵押品。美联储也要求银行持有国债作为其资本的一部分。这些规定创造了对国债的需求。如果没有国债，商业银行和其他金融机构就无法参与金融交易。一旦美国国债成为美联储接受的首选抵押品，它们的价值就会超过市场对美国政府的贷款意愿。它们就成了准入门槛——一种“付费才能参与”的资产。

In the fiat system, the government is the issuer of the original treasuries and the central bank is the printer of money, and because both are public institutions, it’s a case of the left hand of the government lending to the right hand of the government, using the commercial banks as facilitator. But those commercial banks are not part of the state. The central bank tries to oversee the commercial banks, and it does this by obliging them to provide collateral in the form of treasuries. The Fed also requires banks to hold treasuries as part of their capital. These stipulations create a demand for treasuries. Without treasuries, commercial banks and other financial institutions cannot play the money game. Once US treasuries become the premier collateral accepted by the Federal Reserve, they acquire a value over and above the willingness of the market to lend to the American government. They become the entry point—a sort of “pay to play” asset.

世界上最有价值的秘密

The most valuable secret in the world

该系统内部是封闭的：政府发行国债，商业银行和中央银行购买这些国债，政府获得资金，金融体系获得抵押品。商业银行体系随后获得创造新货币的授权。这就是为什么美国金融体系中最重要的价格是美国国债的价格，简称债券收益率。最重要的国债是10年期国债和30年期国债。10年期国债被用作许多金融资产定价的基准，而30年期国债在美国是抵押贷款的参考利率。10年期和30年期国债的“收益率”或利率是短期利率加上风险溢价，因此长期利率通常高于短期利率。短期利率由中央银行设定，并锚定整个体系。无数财经记者和市场分析师试图解读货币政策权威人士的言论，猜测长期债券利率的走向。央行行长们猜测经济和货币供应的走向，而金融市场则对这些猜测进行投机。这实在令人担忧，不是吗？

The system is internally sealed: the government issues treasuries, which are bought by the commercial banks and the central bank, giving the government money, and giving the financial system collateral. The commercial banking system then acquires the permission to create new money. This is why the most important price in the US financial system is the price of US government treasuries, or the bond yield for short. The most important treasury bonds are the 10-year bond, which is used as a benchmark for pricing many financial assets, and the 30-year bond, which in America is the reference rate for mortgages. The “yield” or interest rate on the 10-year and 30-year treasuries is the short-term interest rate plus a risk premium, so the long-term rate is typically higher than the short-term rate. The short-term rate is set by the central bank and anchors the entire system. Legions of financial journalists and market analysts try to decipher the utterances of the high priests of money, to try to guess where the long bond rates might go. The central bankers are guessing what direction the economy and the money supply might take and the financial markets are speculating on that guesswork. Not exactly reassuring, is it?

正如你所见，传统的法定货币经济观点——即中央银行决定经济所需的货币量，并将这笔资金注入商业银行由其分发——完全颠倒了系统的运作方式。这种观点或许适用于教科书，但却无法解释现实世界。实际上，商业银行才是中央银行的真正掌控者。此外，美联储还不想让你知道货币创造的另一个方面。这可是世界上最宝贵的秘密。

As you can see, the traditional economic view of the fiat regime, the one that suggests the central bank decides the appropriate amount of money for the economy and pushes this quantum of cash into commercial banks for them to disseminate, has the system back to front. It’s good for textbooks but doesn’t explain the real world. In reality, the commercial banks pull the central bank around the place. And there is one more aspect of how money is created that the Federal Reserve doesn’t want you to know about. It is the most valuable secret in the world.

创造货币的大型商业银行还有另一种情况。他们还有一项绝招，那就是欧洲美元市场。欧洲美元是在境外创造的美元，不受美联储的监管。尽管名字里有“美元”，但它们与欧元没有任何关系。欧洲美元起源于二战后，当时马歇尔计划导致大量美元在欧洲流通。这些美元被存入不受美国当局监管的银行——包括外国银行和美国银行的境外分支机构。这些境外银行必须将这些美元贷出去才能赚取利息，随着时间的推移，这些银行开始发放欧洲美元贷款，主要用于金融市场的交易。

The large commercial banks that create money have another trick up their sleeves, and it’s called the Eurodollar market. Eurodollars are dollars that are created offshore, far from the grasp of the Federal Reserve. Despite their name, they have nothing to do with the euro. Eurodollars originated following the Second World War when the Marshall Plan led to lots of dollars circulating in Europe. These were deposited in banks that were not regulated by the US authorities—either foreign banks or offshore branches of US banks. These offshore banks had to lend these dollars out to make interest, and over time, the banks began to create Eurodollar loans, largely for transactions on the financial markets.

欧洲美元市场逐渐演变成一个平行的资本市场，随着银行发放更多贷款，创造更多存款，进而催生更多贷款，该市场也随之持续增长。随着伦敦和其他离岸金融中心的资本市场呈指数级增长，欧洲美元市场也随之迅速扩张。需要注意的是，这些欧洲美元以美元的形式进行交易，但由于它们是在离岸地区产生的，因此不受美联储监管。美国大型银行（总部设在美国境外）的游说活动导致美联储实际上对这些国际银行创造更多离岸美元的行为视而不见。如今，欧洲美元已成为国际金融市场的主导货币。全球流通的欧洲美元高达12.8万亿美元。而美国的货币供应量仅略高于20万亿美元。因此，除了全球受监管的美元数量之外，还有64%的美元在流通，而美联储对此却无能为力。简而言之，美国实际上无法控制自己的货币^。

The Eurodollar market became a sort of parallel capital market, which continued to grow as banks made more loans, creating more deposits that in turn created more loans. As capital markets grew exponentially in London and various other offshore financial jurisdictions, so too did this Eurodollar market. Remember, these Eurodollars trade as dollars but, because they are produced offshore, they are not governed by the Federal Reserve’s regulatory requirements. Lobbying by the big US banks domiciled outside the US led to a situation where the Fed, in essence, looked the other way as these international banks created more offshore dollars. Today, Eurodollars are the dominant currency for international financial markets. There are 12.8 trillion Eurodollars circulating around the globe. The American money supply is only just over $20 trillion. So, on top of the regulated amount of US dollars in the world, a further 64 percent of that amount is flowing around, over which the Federal Reserve has no control. In short, the US doesn’t really control its own currency.²

与教科书中对法定货币的理解不同，中央银行并不限制商业银行的信贷规模。中央银行家可能会试图施加影响。央行可以通过对银行施加条件、要求更多抵押品来控制货币流通量；他们可能试图通过调整利率来操纵价格；他们甚至可能利用媒体谴责银行或对世界局势发表意见。但是，他们真的能够控制金融及其在经济中的作用吗？实际上并非如此！他们可以控制货币价格（利率），但无法控制货币数量、货币的用途或创造方式。这意味着，他们充其量只能对系统中的货币量起到引导作用，而利率对经济产生影响所需的时间也各不相同。正是在这段过渡时期，经济形势可能会出现问题，而一旦出现问题，最终承担责任的往往是央行行长们。

In contrast to the textbook understanding of fiat currency, the central bank doesn’t limit the amount of credit the commercial banks create. The central bankers might try to influence the amount of money in circulation by putting conditions on the banks, requesting more collateral; they might try to manipulate the price by adjusting the interest rate; they might even take to the media to admonish banks or opine on the state of the world. But can they control finance and its role in the economy? Not really! They can control the price of money (the rate of interest) but not the quantity of money or where it is deployed or created. This means that, at best, they have a guiding influence on the amount of money in the system, and the time it takes for the rate of interest to influence the economy can vary. It is in this interim period that things can go wrong, and when things do go wrong, it is the central bankers who are left carrying the can.

欧洲美元的秘密——一个价值12万亿美元的秘密——是那些金融巨头们不想让你知道的。央行并非主动向经济注入资金，而是实际上被金融及其创造的货币形式——信贷——所牵引。官方宣称的“推动”与非官方宣称的“拉动”之间的矛盾，以及他们假装自己有能力而实际上却无能为力，削弱了这些金融巨头的权威，使他们常常沦为事后解释者，而非货币命运的主宰。当你问自己为什么我们会反复遭遇银行和金融危机时，答案就在这里——掌权者并没有真正掌控局面。在所有被包装成理论、近乎教条的央行繁文缛节背后，是一群与最具爆炸性的物质——货币——打交道的普通人。在寻找抵押贷款时，请记住，抵押贷款的价格是由信贷周期决定的，而信贷周期是货币中最不稳定的因素，它较少受理性经济学的支配，而更多地受群体疯狂行为的影响。

The Eurodollar secret—a $12 trillion secret—is one that the high priests don’t want you to know about. Rather than pushing money into the economy, the central bank is in reality pulled by finance and its form of bank-created money—credit. The inconsistency between the official push story and the unofficial pull story, pretending they have competence when in reality they don’t, undermines the high priests of money and so often renders them after-the-event explainers rather than masters of money’s destiny. When you ask yourself why we have recurrent banking and financial crises, this is the answer—the people in charge are not in charge. And behind all the central banking pomp and ceremony, which is dressed up as theory, almost catechism, there are mortal humans dealing with that most incendiary of substances: money. Bear in mind when you are looking for a mortgage that the price of it is determined by the credit cycle, that most unstable element of money, which is less governed by rational economics and more a function of the madness of crowds.

福克斯新闻

Fox News

2008年圣帕特里克节那天，我走进位于纽约中城的福克斯新闻电视台演播室。整座城市绿意盎然，洋溢着浓浓的爱尔兰风情。在第五大道的游行队伍中，纽约警察局合唱团的男孩们竟然唱起了《戈尔韦湾》。那天下午，一切都乱了套。华尔街历史最悠久、规模最大的银行之一——贝尔斯登破产了。人们的注意力全都集中在这件事上。而我，则是来这里宣传我刚刚出版的新书。就在我们即将开播的前几秒，主持人莉兹·克拉曼看着我，摇了摇她那头火红的头发，说道：“嘿！你肯定懂银行和金融——我的笔记上写着你以前是银行经济学家。管他什么爱尔兰，咱们聊聊贝尔斯登吧。”话音刚落，红灯亮起，我身后的屏幕上出现了神情恍惚的贝尔斯登员工的身影，我正在福克斯商业频道进行现场直播，克拉曼的第一个问题是：“大卫·麦克威廉姆斯，我们是怎么走到这一步的？”

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2008, I walked into the Fox News TV studio smack in New York’s Midtown. Festooned in green, the Big Apple was Irish. At Fifth Avenue’s parade, the boys of the NYPD choir were actually singing “Galway Bay.” That afternoon, all hell had broken loose. Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s oldest and biggest banks, had gone bust. No one was talking about anything else. Meanwhile, I was there to talk about a book I’d just published. Seconds before we go on air, Liz Claman, the presenter, looks at me, shaking her head of fiery red hair, and says, “Hey! You must know about banking and money—it says here in my notes you are a former bank economist. Screw Ireland, let’s talk Bear Stearns.” And with that, the red light goes on, dazed employees are coming out of Bear Stearns on the screen behind me, I’m live on Fox Business, and Claman’s first question is, “Well, David McWilliams, how did we get here?”

莉兹，就像爱尔兰的情况一样，一切都始于房子，也终于房子。爱尔兰经济就像一个微缩版的……虽然这关系到美国经济，但既然我们身处美国，那就让我们谈谈美国吧。

Well, Liz, as was the case with Ireland, it all started and ended with houses. The Irish economy is a miniature version of the US economy, but as we are in America, let’s talk America.

我们正处于资产价格暴跌之中。这其中一半是经济学因素，一半是人性使然。真是个不稳定的组合！如果美联储长期维持过低的利率，人们就会用资产（比如房产）作抵押借贷更多资金。资产越值钱，银行家就越愿意放贷。而操纵任何资产价格最简单的方法就是利用杠杆——也就是借来的钱——来推高价格。这就陷入了“先有鸡还是先有蛋”的困境：资产价格上涨是因为杠杆增加，还是因为资产价格上涨才导致杠杆增加？杠杆会膨胀并扭曲价格，将其推高并向外扩散。价格上涨的概念很容易理解，但我说的“向外扩散”是什么意思呢？我的意思是，价格越高，人们听到的就越多。随着某些资产价格的上涨——例如美国的公寓——更多的人会想要拥有它们，想要进入这个上涨的市场。

We are in an asset price meltdown. It’s half economics and half human nature. A volatile cocktail! If the Fed keeps interest rates too low for too long, people borrow more money against their asset, say their home. The more valuable their asset, the more bankers will lend them. And the easiest way to manipulate any asset price is to pump it up with leverage—borrowed money. This is a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Is the asset price going up because there is more leverage or is there more leverage because the asset price is going up? Leverage bloats and distorts prices, pushing them upward and outward. The idea of prices moving upward is fairly comprehensible, but what do I mean by outward? I mean that the higher prices go, the more people hear about them. As the price of certain assets rises—for example, condominiums in the US—more people desire them, wanting to get into a rising market.

正如我们所预料的，美国人背负了更多债务。自然而然地，随着房地产需求的增长，供应也随之增加。看到公寓市场利润丰厚，原本计划建造商业办公楼的开发商纷纷调整地块，转而建造公寓，因为他们追逐的是利润。更多的公寓供应涌现，精美的宣传册上描绘着牙齿洁白、头发浓密、身着瑜伽垫的年轻单身人士。这种“房产色情”式的宣传进一步诱惑着更多买家。随着时间的推移，新建公寓的质量和位置将会下降。海滩第一排的公寓全部售罄，于是第二排、第三排、第四排甚至第五排的公寓开始拔地而起。

Americans took on more debt, as we would expect. Naturally, as demand for real estate rises, so too does supply. Seeing the profits being made in the condo market, builders who were going to build commercial offices retool their sites to erect condos because they follow the money. More condos are supplied, boosted by glossy brochures depicting young singles with great teeth, luxuriant hair, and yoga mats. Property porn of this type seduces yet more buyers. In time, the quality and location of new condominiums will deteriorate. All the condos on the first row from the beach are gone, so the second, third, fourth, and fifth rows are built.

如今，银行同时为交易双方提供融资，既向开发商/建筑商提供贷款，也向购房者/投机者提供贷款。随着贷款额的增加，银行利润也一路飙升。利润提升了银行的信用评级，从而降低了其成本。借贷行为愈演愈烈。这些银行胆子越来越大，它们向其他银行和金融机构发行借据，后者购买这些借据，从而为发行银行提供资金，这些资金又可以立即用于发放更多贷款。随着时间的推移，借款人的类型开始发生变化。如此快速的放贷意味着，银行很快就会失去信誉良好的客户。尽管如此，银行仍然接受那些收入可能不如预期那样稳定的借款人。但一切进展顺利，如果A银行不放贷，B银行就会放贷，何乐而不为呢？

The banks are now financing both sides of the trade, providing loans to both the developer-builder and the buyer-speculator. As loans go up, bank profits head ever skyward. Profits push up banks’ credit ratings, which reduce their cost of borrowing. Emboldened, they issue IOUs to other banks and finance houses, who buy the IOUs, giving the issuing banks money that they can immediately give out via yet more loans. Over time, the type of people who borrow begins to change. Lending at such an accelerated rate means that, in no time, the banks run out of creditworthy customers. Undaunted, banks entertain borrowers whose incomes might not be as robust as they would normally require. But things are going well and if bank A doesn’t lend out, bank B will, so why not?

这些财务状况不够稳健的借款人被称为“次级贷款借款人”。传统上，银行绝不会向这些人放贷，但在经济繁荣时期，他们却成了次级贷款客户。

These new less than financially bulletproof borrowers acquired the name “subprime borrowers.” Traditionally, banks wouldn’t lend to these people in a month of Sundays, but in a boom they become subprime clients.

人群

The crowd

普通人往往不会把这些点联系起来。我们看到某个数字上涨，如果我们拥有该资产，这个数字就会让我们变得富有。相反，如果我们没有拥有该资产，这个数字的上涨就会让我们觉得，与越来越富有的邻居相比，我们错失了良机。经济学家往往误解了这一点。美国房价上涨，人们的目光就只停留在房价上涨上。房价上涨既让我们兴奋，又让我们恐惧，从而导致一种集体心态的改变。

The average punter doesn’t join the dots. We see a number going up and that number, if we own the asset, is making us rich. In contrast, if we don’t own that asset, the number going up makes us feel we are missing out compared to our increasingly rich neighbor. This is something that economists tend to misunderstand. US house prices were moving upward and that’s all people could see. The increase in prices both excites and terrifies us, leading to an altered collective state of mind.

正如我们在第十章讨论荷兰郁金香狂热时所指出的那样——而且在反复出现的当代金融危机中也能看到这一点，尽管经济学家声称了解货币，却无法预测正在发生的事情——传统经济学对这种心理存在着深刻的误解。它未能把握货币的复杂性。

As we noted in chapter 10 in relation to Dutch Tulipmania—and can be seen in recurring contemporary financial crises where economists, despite purporting to understand money, fail to predict what is going on—traditional economics profoundly misunderstands this psychology. It fails to grasp the trippiness of money.

如果你在大学学习经济学，你会被告知……在经济学中，价格指的是供需平衡点。这种人为构建的均衡概念是经济学家为了确保其模型有效而炮制出来的。稍加思考现实世界便会发现，这种幻觉只有那些缺乏现实意识的人才会维持。我们每天经历并生活在其中的经济并非模型；它是一个不断适应变化、​​复杂多变的系统，具有自发性和不可预测性。在现实生活中，价格激励着我们，让我们兴奋，用通俗的话来说，物价上涨就像是金融喇叭。当我们被这种喇叭声而非理性思维所驱使时，我们的决策往往难以做到最明智的判断。

If you study economics in university, you will be told that the price in economics is the place where supply equals demand. This fabricated notion of equilibrium has been hatched by economists to make sure their models work. A moment’s thinking about the real world concludes that such an illusion could only be maintained by people who don’t get out enough. The economy we experience every day and live in is not a model; it is an adapting complex system that is spontaneous and unpredictable. In real life, price motivates us, enthuses us, and—to use the language of the street—rising prices give us the financial horn. When we are thinking with the horn rather than the brain, our decision-making is rarely at its most discriminating.

尽管我们在郁金香狂热时期也看到了类似的心理动态，但现代经济拥有更多的信贷和创造信贷的机会，因此繁荣时期更加迅猛，萧条时期也更加剧烈。此外，郁金香狂热时期所缺乏的杠杆效应，意味着更多的人可以参与投机性上涨，更多的资产负债表会在衰退中遭受重创——而且，由于产生的债务必须偿还，随之而来的经济衰退可能会持续更长时间。

Although we saw similar psychological dynamics in the Tulipmania story, the modern economy has far more credit and opportunities to create credit, so the boom becomes even more effervescent and the busts considerably more dramatic. In addition, the presence of leverage, which was absent in Tulipmania, means that many more people can be involved in the speculative upswing and more balance sheets can be destroyed in a slump—and, because the debts incurred have to be paid back, the consequent recession can endure a great deal longer.

通常来说，投资者分为两类：动量投资者和价值投资者。价值投资者是金融课上常讲的那类：他们会分析各种数据和比率，根据客观价值指标寻找公允价值，并遵循一套规则进行投资，关注利润、每股收益、股息、偏离均值以及相对于其他股票或资产的价值。价值投资者会根据风险因素来评估其投资。基于这些计算，他们会做出深思熟虑、不带情绪的决策。虽然在商学院教科书中经常提到价值投资者，但实际上，这类投资者只占少数。

Typically, there are two types of investor: the momentum investor and the value investor. The value investor is the one the finance classes talk about: a person who looks at the numbers and ratios, finds fair value based on some metric of objective worth, and plays according to a set of rules, looking at profits, earnings per share, dividends, deviations from means, and value relative to other stocks or assets. Value investors benchmark their investments against risk factors. Based on their calculations, they make a considered, unemotional decision. Although reasonably common in business school textbooks, in reality, this type of person is part of a small minority.

我们大多数人都是动量投资者。我们不想我们害怕错过机会，所以就跟着涨价。如果某样东西价格上涨，我们也想拥有它。随着价格上涨，我们被卷入其中。乐观情绪感染了我们。从账面上看，市场上的每个人都在发财。银行提供杠杆。资产价格上涨扭曲了资产负债表的一侧，但也对另一侧产生了奇怪的影响。银行放贷是基于一个比率——贷款金额由一定数额的抵押品支撑。这被称为“保证金融资”。这是价格上涨时最佳的借贷方式。假设一套公寓的价格是90万美元，银行将其作为抵押品，提供100万美元的贷款。这意味着借款人需要拿出10万美元的现金。如果公寓价格上涨11%至100万美元，抵押品就足以覆盖贷款的所有风险。借款人受到账面收益的鼓舞，再次找到银行，希望获得更多杠杆，以便在新的滨水开发项目中购买另一套期房公寓——就是那种住着牙齿洁白、铺着瑜伽垫的单身人士的公寓。银行查阅记录后发现，即使公寓价格上涨，借款人的净资产也绰绰有余，于是“审慎地”向借款人提供了更多贷款。

The majority of us are momentum investors. We don’t want to miss out and so we go along for the ride. If something is going up in price, we want to own it too. As prices rise, we get sucked in. Optimism infects us. On paper, everyone in the market is getting rich. The banks extend leverage. Rising asset prices distort one side of the balance sheet, but they also do something weird to the other side. The bank that lends money does so based on a ratio—the amount of the loan is underpinned by an amount of collateral. This is termed “margin financing.” It’s the best way to borrow when prices are rising. Imagine the price of a condo is $900,000, which the bank takes as collateral for a $1,000,000 loan. This means the borrower needs to come up with $100,000 in cash. If the price of the condo rises 11 percent to $1,000,000, the collateral now covers all the risk of the loan. The borrower, buoyed up by the paper gain, goes back to the bank wanting more leverage to buy another apartment off-plan in a new waterfront development, the one featuring those singles with great teeth and yoga mats. The bank checks its records and sees the borrower has more than enough equity at the new higher value of condos, and “prudentially” offers the borrower yet more credit.

兴奋阶段

The exhilaration phase

在这种乐观的氛围下，每个公寓业主都成了“理财达人”，拉拢其他人加入这场“财富游戏”。他们很少从拉拢他人中寻求直接的经济利益，只是被金钱冲昏了头脑，想要分享这份好运。在这个阶段，许多谨慎不轻易花钱的人被说服，经历了一次财务上的“顿悟”。这股上涨势头不仅限于个人资产负债表，政府的资产负债表也同样受益。股本和公司资产负债表也从中受益。这三者共同促成了我们通常所说的经济繁荣。

In this climate of optimism, every condo owner becomes a converter, a sort of money missionary, recruiting others into the game. Rarely seeking any direct financial gain from enlisting others, they are simply tripping on money, and want to share their good fortune. At this stage, many cautious people who don’t easily part with money are coaxed over, experiencing a financial “Come to Jesus” moment. The upswing is not limited to personal balance sheets. The government’s balance sheet and corporate balance sheets also benefit. All three come together in what we usually call an economic boom.

就政府的资产负债表而言，信贷渗透到更广泛的政治、预算和财政周期中。银行系统为了推动房地产繁荣而创造的大量新货币，刺激了消费支出。信用卡额度被提高。人们感觉自己更富裕了，因为账面上的财富增加了。这些支出推高了增值税和间接税的征收，增加了政府收入，减少了预算赤字，并为未来预算中的减税创造了空间。此外，由于建筑业缴纳税款并全力运转，政府的另一项收入来源也随之增加。而且，由于建筑业是劳动密集型产业，失业率下降，因为更多的人不仅直接在建筑业找到工作，还在房地产建设、银行业和广告业等相关行业找到工作——而所有这些行业都受益于最初的信贷激增。一旦减税，随着人们可支配收入的增加，政府会再次注入资金。物价继续飙升。

In the case of the government’s balance sheet, credit bleeds into the greater political, budgetary, and fiscal cycle. All this new money, created by the banking system to feed the property boom, drives up consumer spending. Credit card limits are raised. People feel richer because their wealth has increased on paper. This spending drives VAT and indirect tax takes, boosting government revenue, reducing the budget deficit, and creating the space for tax cuts in the coming budgets. In addition, as the construction industry pays taxes and it is operating at full tilt, another source of government revenue rises. And, because construction is labor-intensive, unemployment falls as more people find jobs not just directly in the construction industry but in the nexus of property construction, banking, and advertising—all of which are boosted by the original credit surge. Once taxes are cut, another injection of money is administered as people have more to spend. Prices keep heading skyward.

在企业资产负债表上，强劲的销售正在推动收入增长。由于通胀持续温和（在美国，通胀主要受中国廉价商品对消费价格的下行压力影响），低利率引发了一波金融工程。增长速度跟不上需求的公司转向债务融资的并购，以在这些不断增长的市场中获取更多份额。低利率意味着失败成本低，因此公司会投资于初创企业，而如果利率更高，这些企业可能根本没有成功的希望。我们可以看到，如果利率长期维持在低位，廉价资金将为脆弱的公司或缺乏活力的理念提供融资，而这些公司或理念仅仅依靠整体货币繁荣才能勉强维持。那些由于利率波动而保持偿付能力的老牌公司，也面临着同样的困境。由于利率过低，所谓的“僵尸公司”会在利率上升时倒闭。但新成立的公司，即“幽灵公司”——那些烧钱却不盈利的初创企业——也会面临同样的命运。一旦利率再次上升，这些僵尸公司和幽灵公司将首当其冲地崩溃。

On the corporate balance sheet, buoyant sales are driving revenues. As inflation remains muted (as it did in America largely due to the downward pressure on consumer prices from cheap goods from China), low interest rates trigger a bout of financial engineering. Companies that can’t grow quickly enough turn to debt-financed mergers to acquire more of a share in these growing markets. The lower interest rates mean the cost of failure is low, so companies invest in start-ups that might never have had any hope of success had interest rates been higher. We can see how, if interest rates are held down for too long, cheap money finances fragile companies or weak ideas that are only sustained by the overall monetary effervescence. Old companies that have remained solvent due to interest rates being too low, so-called zombie companies, go bust when interest rates rise. But so too do new companies, “phantom companies”—those start-ups burning through investors’ money but without profit. These zombie and phantom companies will be the first to implode when interest rates rise again.

正是在21世纪初这种蓬勃发展的背景下，百万富翁房地产开发商在财经媒体上被奉为救世主。过度杠杆化的银行屡获殊荣，它们的首席执行官们则在达沃斯论坛上就气候变化发表高见。人们议论纷纷，气氛热烈，没有什么能破坏这种氛围。各国政府多年来首次实现预算盈余，人们抱怨周三晚上找不到餐馆，而《纽约邮报》却在报道一位名厨与一位地产大亨的女儿在玛莎葡萄园岛的婚礼。

It was against this effervescent background in the noughties that millionaire property developers were treated with messianic respect in the pages of the financial press. As overleveraged banks won awards, their chief executives appeared in Davos opining on climate change. People were buzzing and nothing could wreck the mood. With governments running budget surpluses for the first time in years, people complained about not being able to get a restaurant table on Wednesday nights while the New York Post recorded the marriage of a celebrity chef to the daughter of a property magnate on Martha’s Vineyard.

在每一次信贷驱动的上涨行情中，都存在三种类型的借款人，他们的资产负债表也各不相同。第一种是套期保值借款人。这类借款^人收入充足，足以支付贷款的月利息和年度本金。第二种是投机性借款人。这类借款人只能支付利息，需要不断展期本金，希望最终以高价出售资产，从而获得巨额利润，然后再偿还本金。第三种是庞氏骗局借款人，他们的收入既无法支付利息也无法偿还本金，只能依靠价格持续上涨来偿还贷款。他们进入市场的目的是“转手”把公寓卖给下一个买家。从根本上讲，在如此离谱的高价位下，市场没有任何财务意义。这种繁荣景象的维持，完全依赖于大众的错觉。正是在这种背景下，我们开始听到关于……的故事。新的范式，关于估值、价格和货币的新奇理论。这是风险最高的时​​期，然而也是大多数业余人士涌入市场的时期。

In every credit-driven upswing there are three types of borrower with three different underlying balance sheets. The first type of borrower is the hedge borrower.¹ This person has enough income to be able to pay both the monthly interest payments on the loan and the annual principal on the capital. A second type of borrower is the speculative borrower. This player can only afford to pay the interest on the debt and will need to roll over her capital payments, hoping to sell the asset at the end for a large profit and only then pay off the capital. The third type of borrower is the Ponzi borrower, who can neither pay his interest nor his capital from his income and needs prices to keep rising to pay back anything. He is in the market to “flip” the condo onto the next person coming in. Fundamentally, the market, at these ridiculously high prices, makes no financial sense. The edifice is maintained only by mass delusion. It is at this point that we hear stories about new paradigms, newfangled theories about valuations, prices, and money. This is the moment of peak risk and yet it is the moment when most amateurs get into the game.

经济衰退

The downturn

一些精明的投资者选择获利了结，因为他们知道，过早卖出永远不会亏钱。市场很少出现明显的卖出信号，即使有，也只有在事后才能领会。这些精明的投资者在接近顶峰时离场，把钱卖给那些在底部入场的人。现在，市场依赖于金字塔底部的新鲜血液。随着这些精明投资者的行动，又有一些人决定卖出。自乐观情绪高涨以来，价格首次出现小幅波动。

Some savvy investors take their profits, aware that no one ever lost money by selling too early. There is a rarely an overt sell signal, or if there is one, it is only appreciated in hindsight. These shrewd investors get out near the top, selling to those coming in at the bottom. The market now depends on fresh players at the bottom of the pyramid. Following the savvy players, a few more decide it’s time to sell. For the first time since before the optimistic phase, prices wobble a bit.

我们正进入否认阶段。那些轻松赚钱的人将价格回调视为上涨趋势中的小波动。事实上，许多真正的信徒正利用此次价格下跌的机会买入更多股票，声称看到了便宜货。由于已买入股票的人继续加仓，价格可能会上涨。但有些事情已经改变；这种感觉已经改变。经验丰富的交易者将市场反转后的这种后期上涨称为“牛市陷阱”，意思是它给人一种新一轮上涨的错觉，而实际上魔咒早已破灭。就在上周，似乎还有无穷无尽的买家，但现在卖家却发现买家已经消失得无影无踪。

We are entering the denial phase. Those who have been making easy money dismiss the correction in prices as a blip on the upward trajectory. In fact, many of the true believers use this fall in prices as an opportunity to buy yet more, claiming to see bargains. Prices might rally as a result of the already-committed committing more. But something has changed; that feeling has altered. Seasoned players call this late-stage upswing after the market has turned a “bull trap,” meaning it gives the impression of a new upward movement, when in fact the spell has already been broken. There seemed to be an infinite number of buyers only last week, but sellers are now finding buyers have disappeared.

谣言开始朝着相反的方向传播。买家消失，卖家涌现，价格开始下跌。恐慌蔓延。人们试图出售自己的公寓，但市场已经饱和。在经济学中，我们称之为“聚合悖论”，这意味着对个人有利的，对群体未必有利。集体行为。在这种情况下，银行审视自身的资产负债表，发现他们用来发放贷款的抵押品价值下跌。于是，银行联系各个借款人，告知他们需要更多资金来弥补差价。如果银行建议一位公寓业主出售房产，这无可厚非；但当所有银行都要求所有客户出售房产以筹集资金时，聚合悖论就出现了。当所有人都在卖房时，谁来买房呢？市场上充斥着公寓。买家眼见价格下跌，如果还有买家，他们会推断明天价格进一步下跌时，就能捡到便宜。想想一场足球比赛。比赛精彩纷呈，你前面的人站起来想看得更清楚。这只对他自己有效，前提是其他人没有站起来。但他的站起来会让我们其他人也站起来，以获得类似的更好视野，很快，我们花钱买座位票的整个体育场都站了起来，而没有人能获得更好的视野。同样地，如果我卖房，而且我是唯一的卖家，我的资产负债表就会改善，因为我的公寓卖了个好价钱；但如果每个人都在卖房，我们所有人的公寓价格都会降低，每个人的资产负债表都会恶化。

The rumor mill begins to work in the opposite direction. Buyers evaporate, more sellers emerge, and prices start to fall. Panic sets in. People try to sell their condos, but the market is flooded. We call this the “paradox of aggregation” in economics, which means what is good for the individual is not always good for the collective. In this case, the banks, watching their own balance sheets, see that the collateral they were basing their lending on has fallen in value. The banks then contact individual borrowers to tell them they need more cash to cover the margin. When the bank advises one condo owner to sell, that’s OK, but the paradox of aggregation kicks in when all the banks ask all their clients to sell to raise cash. When everyone is selling, who is buying? The market is flooded with condos. Buyers see prices falling and, if any buyers are left, they deduce the bargain will come tomorrow when prices fall yet further. Think of a football match. The game gets exciting and the guy in front of you stands up to get a better view. This only works for him as long as no one else stands up. But his standing up signals to the rest of us to stand up to get a similarly better view and soon the entire stadium is standing when we have paid to sit and no one gets a better view. In the same way, if I sell and I am the only seller, my balance sheet will improve because I get a good price for my condo, but if everyone is selling, we all get lower values for our condos and everyone’s balance sheet deteriorates.

恐慌蔓延，房价持续暴跌，随着大众意识到自己的错误，经济大萧条随之而来。银行也意识到，随着越来越多的借款人无力偿还债务而交出房产钥匙，它们的资产负债表与崩盘的市场紧密相连。庞氏骗局中的借款人最先放弃。他的处境原本就最为岌岌可危，一旦房价开始下跌，他“明天卖给下一个傻瓜”的策略便彻底失败。他既没有收入也没有财富，只能在律师和讨债人的追赶下离开。随着房价持续下跌，那位只能支付利息的投机性借款人也开始陷入困境。她的收入和其他人一样，都依赖于整体经济，而当公寓热潮破灭时，经济中的额外信贷也随之消失。银行开始催收贷款。这就是信贷紧缩的景象。今天的钱远比明天能得到的钱更有价值。

Fear abounds and prices continue tumbling, leading to widespread depression as the herd grasps its mistake. The banks realize that their balance sheets are umbilically tied to the collapsing market as more and more borrowers hand back the keys, unable to pay their debt. Our Ponzi borrower is the first to give up. His position was always the most precarious and, once prices start falling, his strategy of selling to a “greater fool” tomorrow is goosed. He has neither income nor wealth and walks away, chased by lawyers and debt collectors. As prices continue downward, the speculative borrower, who could only pay her interest, starts to sink. Her income, like everyone else’s, is based on the broader economy, and when the condo craze collapses, so too does extra credit in the economy. Banks start to call in loans. This is what a credit crunch looks like. Money today becomes far more valuable than promises of money tomorrow.

到了这个阶段，人们开始意识到，他们存在银行里的钱——我们大多数人认为这些钱是用来保管的——实际上是我们借给银行的贷款，用来换取利息。银行利用这些贷款发放更多贷款，只要这些贷款都正常发放，就不会有人质疑。资金流入，资金流出。但是，当贷款停止发放，人们违约，银行面临一连串的坏账时，会发生什么呢？

At this stage, it begins to dawn on people that the money they have in the bank, which most of us believe is there for safekeeping, is in fact a loan that we make to the bank in return for interest. The bank uses this loan to create more loans and, as long as those loans are all performing, no one asks any questions. Money goes in and money goes out. But what happens when loans stop performing, when people default and the banks face a cascade of bad loans?

银行曾疯狂放贷，每发放一笔新贷款，都必须确保其资产负债表与存款平衡。银行存款越多，放贷能力就越强。但随着放贷的持续扩张，存款逐渐耗尽，银行不得不另寻资金来源。在存款枯竭的狂热时期，银行便向其他银行借款。有时，它们会进行短期借贷，发行需要每年展期或再融资的借据。在信贷紧缩时期，银行的资产（已发放的贷款）与负债（存款和其他必须偿还的短期票据）之间存在错配。你会注意到，在信贷紧缩时期，银行会提高存款利率，因为它们希望留住存款。如果存款流失，银行将面临重大问题，因为银行的借贷往往是短期的，而放贷则是长期的。例如，他们发放公寓贷款时，通常是三十年期抵押贷款，所以他们三十年后才能全额收回贷款。相比之下，他们的储户有权立即要求提取存款。银行业的基本原则是确保贷款正常发放，并让储户安心。

The banks had lent out hand over fist and for each new loan they were required to square their balance sheet with deposits. The more deposits the banks had, the more they could lend. But as they continued to lend, they ran out of deposits and were compelled to raise money elsewhere. In that mania phase, when deposits were exhausted, the banks borrowed from other banks. Sometimes they borrowed in the very short term, issuing IOUs that rolled over or needed to be refinanced every year. In a credit crunch, the banks have a mismatch between their assets (the loans they lent out) and their liabilities (the deposits and other short-term paper that must be paid back). You will notice that, in a credit crunch, banks will offer higher rates on deposits because they want to keep their deposits from leaving. If deposits flee a bank, the bank has a major problem because banks borrow in the short term and lend in the long term. For example, when they lend for a condo, it’s usually a thirty-year mortgage, so they can’t get that money back in full for thirty years. In contrast, their depositors have the right to demand their money immediately. The fundamental rule of banking is to make sure loans are performing and depositors are at ease.

金钱、银行和金融的核心都是信任。如果我们信任我们很少会关心自己存在银行的存款是否安全。我们理所当然地认为存款会一直在那里，因此，如果我们有幸拥有一些积蓄，也从不费心从银行取出来。但如果人们开始质疑银行的偿付能力呢？股价下跌就是一个警示，它预示着银行内部可能存在一些高管们极力掩盖的问题。而这些问题就是破产。随着坏账的增加，借款人在崩盘的市场重压下苦苦挣扎，银行的股价也随之暴跌。卖家蜂拥而至抛售银行股票，却无人问津，最终股价崩盘。

Money, banking, and finance are all about trust. If we trust the banks, we rarely concern ourselves about whether our money on deposit is secure or not. We expect it to be there and, as a consequence, if we are lucky enough to have savings, we never bother to take them out of the bank. But what if people begin to question the solvency of the bank? Share prices on the way down are an alarm, warning that there may be something going on in the bank that the executives would rather hide. That something is bankruptcy. As bad debts rise, and borrowers sink under the weight of a collapsing market, the banks’ share prices fall. Sellers queue up to flog bank shares, but there are no buyers, and the share price collapses.

忧心忡忡的储户纷纷取走存款。通常，这种现象会从大型企业储户开始，逐渐蔓延。一旦开始，就会迅速加剧，这就是为什么银行挤兑被称为“挤兑”（run），而不是“散步”（stroke）或“闲逛”（amble）。正如资产价格飙升是由谣言和闲聊推动的一样，银行挤兑也是如此。通常情况下，银行会进入银行间贷款市场，试图筹集资金。但是，谁会愿意借钱给一家看起来即将破产的公司呢？这就是贝尔斯登在2008年所面临的困境。它当时交易的是哪些证券或衍生品，这些细节并不重要，重要的是这里概述的过程。当贝尔斯登进入银行间市场时，没有银行愿意向它放贷。当它试图将部分资产出售给其他银行以改善其资产负债表时，交易也未能达成。作为传统的最后贷款人，美联储在 3 月初试图为该银行提供支持，但到了圣帕特里克节，一切都已成定局，因为其整体损失的程度尚不清楚。

Worried depositors take their money out. Usually, this begins gradually with large corporate depositors. Once it starts, it can accelerate quickly, which is why a bank run is called a run, not a stroll or an amble. Just as a surge in asset prices is driven by rumor and gossip, so too is a bank run. Typically, a bank will go to the interbank loan market and try to raise funds. But who is going to lend money to an entity that looks like it is going bust? This is the predicament in which Bear Stearns had found itself in 2008. The specific details of what securities or derivatives it was dealing in are less important than the process outlined here. When Bear Stearns went to the interbank market, no banks were prepared to lend to it. When it tried to sell a chunk of itself to other banks to shore up its balance sheet, no deal could be done. The Federal Reserve, traditionally the lender of last resort, tried to backstop the bank in early March but by St. Patrick’s Day the game was up, because the extent of its overall losses was not clear.

在福克斯新闻频道，莉兹·克拉曼可能后悔自己当初问了这个问题。

On Fox News, Liz Claman probably wished she’d never asked the question.

政策的预期结果

The intended consequence of policy

在2008年圣帕特里克节大屠杀发生后的几周和几个月里，一家又一家银行倒闭。危机中，你不仅会耗尽资金，还会耗尽时间。如果银行能够争取到时间，或许可以缓解恐慌，但在危机中，时间变得极其宝贵。抛售持续不断，资产负债表崩溃，在争相套现的过程中，优质资产也被变卖以弥补不良资产的损失。一家银行股价暴跌，牵一发而动全身，拖垮了其他银行。六个月后，也就是同年9月，2008年全球金融危机爆发了。

In the weeks and months that followed the 2008 St. Patrick’s Day Massacre, one bank after another would go bust. In a crisis, you don’t just run out of money, you run out of time. Had the banks been able to buy time, they might have tempered the panic, but in a crisis time becomes incredibly scarce. Selling continued, balance sheets imploded, and, in the dash for cash, good assets were sold to pay for the losses on dodgy assets. One collapsing bank share price infected and dragged down others and by September that year, six months later, the 2008 global financial crisis was upon us.

这个故事凸显了我们探讨过的金钱的诸多特性。金钱是一种财富储存手段，它激励着我们，让我们兴奋不已。它放大人类行为，凸显出诸如热情、希望和乐观等特质，以及贪婪、嫉妒和傲慢等负面情绪。这就是金钱的本质——金钱改变人类行为，而人类行为也改变金钱。金钱让我们得以穿越时空：借贷让我们用未来的收入来支付今天的开销；投机则让我们用金钱和潜在利润来描绘未来的蓝图。即便事与愿违，即便我们发誓永不再犯，我们也从未真正吸取教训。下一个周期的种子正是上一个周期的废墟，价值投资者再次以低价买入下跌的资产，热情高涨，然后我们又开始了新一轮的循环。

This story underlines many of the properties of money that we have explored. Money is a store of wealth that motivates and excites us. It amplifies human behavior, bringing into focus attributes such as enthusiasm, hope, and optimism, as well as greed, envy, and pride. This is the essential plutophyte aspect of money—money changes human behavior and human behavior changes money. Money allows us to travel in time: by borrowing we are taking tomorrow’s income to pay for today, while by speculating we are painting a picture of the future for ourselves expressed in money and potential profit. And even when things fall apart, and we promise ourselves never again, we never learn. The seeds of the next cycle are the ruins of the last, as yet again value investors pick up the fallen asset cheaply, become enthusiastic, and off we go.

2008年后的十年间，全球经济衰退迫使各国央行的决策者们大幅降低利率，并以惊人的热情印钞。他们的目标是重振美国消费者和银行体系的资产负债表。2008年金融危机后出现的这种衰退被称为“资产负债表衰退”：一方面，经济衰退导致美国经济崩溃，另一方面，美国经济受到严重冲击，导致美国经济崩溃，并最终导致美国银行体系破产。人们的资产负债表上，一部分是资产（主要是房产），另一部分是他们为了购买这些房产和其他资产而背负的债务。金融危机后，资产价格暴跌，但债务却依然如故。

In the decade after 2008, global recession compelled the Brahmins in the central banks to cut the rate of interest dramatically and print money with flamboyant enthusiasm. Their aim was to refloat the balance sheets of America’s consumers and its banking system. The type of recession that followed the 2008 crash is termed a “balance sheet recession”: on one side of people’s balance sheets were assets, largely houses, and on the other were the debts they incurred to buy those houses and other assets. After the crash, the asset prices collapsed but the debt remained the same.

量化宽松是美联储在2009年推出的一项新政策，之所以这样命名，是为了将其与更传统的价格宽松政策区分开来。通常情况下，如果央行想要刺激经济增长，就会降低利率。​​这将设定信贷价格，随着信贷成本的降低，人们会增加借贷，减少储蓄，银行也会放贷，从而推高消费。但在2009年，利率无法刺激经济增长，因为经济陷入了凯恩斯所说的“流动性陷阱”。在这种情况下，人们背负了过多的现有债务，无论利率多低，他们都不愿借贷；而银行也背负了过多的不良贷款，同样不愿放贷。正如凯恩斯所说，指望利率来推动经济增长就像推绳子一样徒劳无功。在这种情况下，央行必须向经济注入大量资金，迫使银行放贷。

Quantitative easing was a new policy introduced by the Fed in 2009, named so to distinguish it from the more traditional price easing. Usually, if the central bank wants to get the economy moving, it will cut interest rates. This will set the price of credit and, as credit is cheaper, people will borrow more and save less, and banks will lend, driving spending upward. But in 2009, interest rates couldn’t get the economy moving because it was stuck in what Keynes described as a “liquidity trap.” This is when people have too much existing debt and they won’t borrow, no matter how low the interest rates, while the banks have too much bad debt and won’t lend either. Depending on interest rates to propel the economy is as useful as pushing on a string, as Keynes is said to have remarked. In such a situation the central bank has to flood the economy with money and force the banks to lend.

严格来说，美联储实际上并不印钞来实施量化宽松政策。美联储会联系各家银行，提出购买它们资产负债表上价值100亿美元的国债。这意味着，原本流动性较差的债券，在央行的帮助下变得具有流动性，并立即兑换成新的美元。之后，银行可以随意支配这笔资金。美联储就这样一举创造了100亿美元，而此前这些资金并不存在。在这种情况下，是美联储主动推动货币供应，而不是被动地被货币所吸引。

Technically, the Brahmins don’t actually print money to carry out quantitative easing. The Fed contacts the banks and offers to buy, let’s say, $10 billion of the treasuries that the banks have on their balance sheets, meaning that something that was illiquid, a bond, is made liquid by the central bank and is immediately converted into new dollars. The banks can then do what they want with this money. At a stroke, the Federal Reserve has created $10 billion that didn’t exist before. In this case, it is pushing money as opposed to being pulled by money.

除此之外，美联储还采取了另一项措施。它必须确保银行会将这些新增资金贷出去，而不是囤积起来或购买其他更适合储蓄的资产。传统上，储户的首选资产是美国政府的……10年期国债收益率不错。美联储决定买入这些债券，将它们从市场上撤出，切断了银行的这一避风港。银行别无选择，只能将新增资金贷出，而这些资金流向了它们最青睐的客户。这些客户通常是谁？是那些原本就富有的人。低利率推高了资产价格，而当资产价格上涨时，谁获益最多？是富人还是穷人？当然是富人，因为他们拥有资产——这就是他们富有的原因。少数依靠资产、租金和股息收入的人，比我们这些依靠工资收入的大多数人获益更多。财富不平等加剧并非量化宽松政策的意外后果——这正是其目标所在。

On top of this, the Fed did one more thing. It had to make sure the banks would lend this new money rather than sit on it or buy some other asset that was ideal for saving. Traditionally, the asset of choice for savers was the US government’s 10-year bond, which yielded a decent return. The Fed decided to buy up these bonds, taking them out of the market, and choking off this savings refuge for the banks. The banks had no choice but to lend the new money, and this money went to their favorite customers. Who are they, typically? The already wealthy. Lower interest rates drive up asset prices and, when asset prices rise, who benefits most, the rich or the poor? The rich, of course, because they own stuff—that’s why they are rich. The small minority of people who depend on assets, rents and dividends for their income benefit significantly more than the vast majority of us who rely on wages. Soaring wealth inequality was not the unintended consequence of quantitative easing—it was the objective.

越来越多的人发现自己被排除在富裕阶层之外，他们在社会中的地位日益下降。这些人或许没有既得利益，但他们拥有投票权；他们会投票给那些看似能解决他们困境的人或理念。在这个不平等的世界里，那些口号简单、能给人带来慰藉的运动开始显得颇具吸引力。唐纳德·特朗普和英国脱欧，在某种程度上，都是量化宽松政策的政治产物——这两个本土主义运动都与“被遗忘者”的诉求不谋而合，并受到财富不均的推动。民粹主义诞生于中央银行，而创造它的正是民粹主义视为敌人的精英阶层。

More and more people found themselves locked out of the wealth party, and their stake in society diminished. These people might not have a stake but they do have a vote; they vote for the person or idea that appears to address their plight. Movements with simple slogans, offering comfort in this unequal world, begin to look attractive. Donald Trump and Brexit are, among other things, the political offspring of quantitative easing—both nativist movements chime with the “left behinds” and are fueled by wealth inequality. Populism was birthed in the central banks, created by the very elite that populism considers the enemy.

随着西方不平等加剧，银行获得救助而普通民众却被迫承受紧缩政策，人们对货币机构的尊重以及央行行长履行职责的能力都受到了削弱。在全球金融体系信任度跌至谷底，现有货币政策加剧财富不平等的背景下，是否会出现一种新的货币形式，一种新的承诺？

As inequality in the West rose, and the banks were seen to be bailed out while austerity was imposed on ordinary people, respect for money’s institutions and the ability of the central bankers to deliver was undermined. With trust in the global financial system at a low ebb, and established monetary policy exacerbating wealth inequality, might there be a new form of money on the horizon, a new promise?

私营与公共

Private vs public

2023年10月13日，星期五，在都柏林圣帕特里克大教堂，我坐在讲坛下方。从1713年到1745年，乔纳森·斯威夫特院长曾在此布道。迈克尔·刘易斯也在此探讨一种新型货币——加密货币，重点介绍了他的畅销书《无限之旅》 （Going Infinite） 。这本书记录了被誉为“加密货币界的摩根大通”的萨姆^·班克曼-弗里德的兴衰历程。他曾被誉为“货币的未来”，受到记者、名人和政客的追捧。

On Friday, October 13, 2023, in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I sat below the pulpit where, from 1713 to 1745, Dean Jonathan Swift delivered his sermons. Michael Lewis was there to discuss a new form of money, cryptocurrency, focusing specifically on his blockbuster Going Infinite, which documents the rise and fall of the so-called JP Morgan of Crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was hailed as the future of money, fêted by journalists, celebrities, and politicians alike.¹

他的公司FTX估值数十亿美元，各种经验丰富的投资者都争相入场。最终，就像郁金香泡沫、高杠杆公寓以及许多其他价格飙升后又暴跌的资产一样，这一切都不过是一个巨大的泡沫，由空洞的言辞和历史性的低利率所吹大。2008年危机后的量化宽松政策创造了信贷繁荣，由于短期利率接近于零，银行被迫将贷款期限延长，并投向风险更高的项目。这样他们就能获得收益。有了这些“免费”资金，银行开始进行风险更高的投资。我们正目睹一场前所未有的巨大实验。经济学界的权威人士或许曾在教科书和黑板上探讨过这个想法，但实际上，零利率从未真正存在过。从宏观经济角度来看，短期内零利率是合理的，因为最终资产负债表会自行调整。但如果利率长期维持在过低水平，各种各样奇怪的计划就会获得融资，而很少有人质疑。FTX 就是这样一个例子。

His company, FTX, was valued in the billions of dollars and all sorts of seasoned investors vied for a piece of the action. In the end, like tulips, highly leveraged condos, and a whole host of assets that have soared and fallen back to earth, the entire thing turned out to be nothing more than a massive bubble, inflated by hot air and historically low interest rates. Quantitative easing following the 2008 crisis created a lending bonanza and, with short-term interest rates at zero, banks were forced to lend for much longer periods and to much riskier ventures so they could acquire a yield. With this “free” money, banks started taking riskier bets. We were witnessing a giant experiment that had never been tried before. The Brahmins of economics might have played around with this idea in textbooks and on blackboards, but in reality, zero interest rates had never existed. From a macroeconomic perspective, zero interest rates make sense for a short time, as eventually the balance sheet will right itself. But keep rates too low for too long and all sorts of strange schemes get financed, few questions asked. FTX was one such venture.

刘易斯至死都保持着慈善和同情心，他认为与他相处过许多小时的班克曼-弗里德与其说是一个两面三刀的罪犯，不如说是一个极其无能的人，情感上根本不适合经营一家糖果店，更遑论管理数十亿美元客户存款的公司。然而，在2023年班克曼-弗里德于纽约接受刑事审判时，陪审团却对他不以为然，法官认定他犯有盗窃他人钱财的罪行。

Lewis, charitable and empathetic to the last, regarded Bankman-Fried, with whom he had spent many hours, as less a duplicitous criminal and more an extravagantly incompetent personality, emotionally unsuited to running a sweet shop, let alone a company that held billions of dollars of customers’ deposits in trust. The jury at Bankman-Fried’s 2023 criminal trial in New York didn’t see him in such a generous light, however, and the judge found him guilty of stealing other people’s money.

在这个特殊的礼拜场所讨论又一次货币泡沫的破灭，似乎颇为应景。1720年，当英国和爱尔兰正遭受南海公司股票崩盘带来的经济和政治冲击时，乔纳森·斯威夫特——他和艾萨克·牛顿一样，都卷入了这场骗局——写下了讽刺诗《泡沫》。他痛斥那些投机公司的董事们，他们诱骗无辜者落入圈套，诗中写道：

It seemed apt to be discussing yet another monetary boom-and-bust in this particular place of worship. In 1720, when Britain and Ireland were suffering the economic and political fallout from the collapse in the South Sea Company’s shares, Jonathan Swift—who, along with Isaac Newton, got caught up in the scam—penned his satirical poem “The Bubble.” Lambasting the directors of a speculative company who suckered innocents into their wheeze, he wrote:

到那时，这个国家将会为时已晚地发现这一点。

计算所有成本和麻烦后，

导演们的承诺，却如同风一般，

南海，充其量不过是一个巨大的泡沫。

The nation then too late will find,

Computing all their cost and trouble,

Directors’ promises but wind,

South Sea, at best, a mighty bubble.

班克曼-弗里德之于2020年代，正如这些投机者之于18世纪20年代；就货币、投机、人性以及信贷周期而言，300年前的真理至今依然适用。我们究竟何时才能吸取教训？班克曼-弗里德及其支持者并非只是在遥远的异国他乡玩弄一种新型资产；他们是新运动的一部分，被旨在掌控一种全新货币——加密货币——的技术进步所吸引。

Bankman-Fried was to the 2020s what these operators were to the 1720s; when it comes to money, speculation, human nature, and the credit cycle, what held 300 years ago still holds today. Will we ever learn? Bankman-Fried and his supporters weren’t just playing with a new asset in a far-off land; they were part of a new movement, captivated by advances in technology that purported to control a completely new type of money, cryptocurrency.

加密货币或许是一种新型货币，但关于谁控制和创造货币的斗争已经持续了数千年，历代帝王、统治者和君主都曾与开创和传播金融的商人和银行家阶层进行过斗争。在过去的500年里，这场斗争此消彼长，但在21世纪，货币世界在中央银行的推动和商业银行的拉动之间达成了一种融合——或者说是一种休战。国家通过对政府负责的中央银行发行货币。商业银行创造信贷，在中央银行监管机构的监督下协调金融活动。正如我们在第19章中看到的，经济学教科书中推崇的推动理论在很大程度上是错误的。法定货币更多地体现了商业银行的拉动，但尽管它们拥有强大的权力和规模，仍然可以对其征税和监管。华盛顿可以选择规范华尔街的行为。这样，货币仍然在国家的管辖范围之内——它是公共的。你能想象国家放弃这种权力吗？

Crypto may be a new type of money, but the battle over who controls and creates money has been waged for millennia by emperors, rulers, and monarchs against each other and against the merchants and the banking class who pioneered and disseminated finance. Over the past 500 years, this struggle has ebbed and flowed, but in the twenty-first century the monetary world has arrived at a synthesis—a truce, if you like—between the push of central bank control and the pull of commercial banking. The state, via the central bank, which is answerable to the government, issues the currency. The commercial banks create credit, orchestrating finance under the watch of central bank regulators. As we saw in chapter 19, the push theory favored by economics textbooks is largely wrong. Fiat money is more about the pull of commercial banks, but despite their power and size, they can still be taxed and regulated. Washington can choose to put manners on Wall Street. In this way, money remains within the competence of the state—it is public. Could you imagine the state giving that power away?

千百年来，形形色色的人物，从贬值货币的尼禄皇帝、但丁笔下的伪钞制造者阿达莫大师，甚至阿道夫·希特勒，都曾试图通过操纵货币来控制货币。所有这些努力都旨在将公共资金私有化，而加密货币则是这一“辉煌”名单上的最新例证。尽管它在言辞上可能披着光鲜的外衣，但本质上仍然是私有化。对于普通人来说，加密货币是一种解放，它本质上是一种私人货币。但毋庸置疑，富人将从私人货币中获益最多——毕竟，他们拥有这些货币的所有权。未来几年的一场重大较量将在私人实体发行的私人货币和国家机关以公民名义发行的公共货币之间展开。

Time and again over the millennia, a cast of characters as diverse as the coin-debasing Emperor Nero, Dante’s counterfeiter Maestro Adamo, and even Adolf Hitler have tried to control money by manipulating it. All these were efforts aimed at privatizing public money and the latest example in this illustrious list is crypto. Dressed up though it may be in the rhetoric of liberation for the average person, crypto is a form of private money. Be under no illusion, the rich will benefit most from private money—after all, they will own it. A major battle in the years to come will be between private money issued by private entities and public money issued by the organs of the state in the name of the citizen.

加密眩晕

Crypto vertigo

加密货币的炒作很大程度上感觉就像是TikTok时代的数字伪造。这并不是说货币不会在数据驱动的时代进行调整并呈现新的形式，但几个精通技术的家伙发行代币，然后把这些代币称为“货币”，这绝不是货币的未来。加密货币或多或少是一场精心策划的骗局，它利用了公众对民主制度和市场的信任度跌至新低的时代。加密货币的承诺是提供一种新的民主、平等和诚实的货币形式，其宣言包含着一种革命性的吸引力——打破既得利益集团对金融的控制，打开华尔街之外的货币世界。至少，这是它宣传的口号。

Much of the cryptocurrency hype feels like little more than digital counterfeiting for the TikTok age. That is not to say that money will not adjust to and take on new forms in our data-driven era, but a few tech-savvy bros issuing tokens and calling these coupons “currency” is not the future of money. More or less an elaborate scam, crypto capitalized on an era when public trust in democratic institutions and markets reached a new low. The promise of crypto was a new democratic, egalitarian, and honest form of money, and its manifesto involved a kind of revolutionary appeal—smashing the establishment’s hold on finance, and opening up the world of money beyond Wall Street. At least, that was the spin.

比特币等加密货币并非由据称腐败的政府发行，而是由不可篡改的算法控制，并以名为“区块链”的新技术为基础，而这项技术得益于正在进行的全球数据革命。区块链是所有加密货币交易的清算中心，旨在消除银行系统在交易清算中的作用。比特币内置自毁算法，且可挖出的比特币数量有限。目前比特币总量为1960万枚，其中超过93%已被挖出，其余的仍在继续挖取中。所谓的比特币矿工。猜猜看谁才是比特币的最大受益者：交易所（每次交易都要抽成）和那些已经持有比特币、并且当初以远低于现在的价格购入的人。

Rather than being issued by allegedly corrupt governments, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are governed by incorruptible algorithms, underpinned by a new technology called “blockchain,” made possible by the ongoing global data revolution. Blockchain is a clearing house for all trades in cryptocurrencies and is designed to eliminate the banking system’s role in clearing transactions. Bitcoin has an inbuilt self-destruct algorithm, and the number of Bitcoins that can be mined is finite. In total there are 19.6 million Bitcoins available. Over 93 percent have already been mined and the rest continue to be extracted by so-called Bitcoin miners. Guess who is making all the money from Bitcoin: the exchanges, which take a clip every time it is traded, and the people who already hold Bitcoin and have acquired it at far lower prices than prevail today.

尽管比特币的支持者有时会对其加密货币地位提出质疑，但它通常被认为是加密货币家族的一员。其有限的供应量使其区别于其他由各种加密货币公司发行的加密货币，后者只不过是自家铸造的货币。猜猜谁会从这种第二种加密货币中赚得盆满钵满？当然是发行者，正如历史上一直如此。这种以 Sam Bankman-Fried 和 FTX 为代表的第二种加密货币，只要热度持续，发行量就没有限制。但我们都知道，热潮过后会发生什么。如果一家不受监管的私人公司发行代币，并称这些代币为货币，那么成为最后一个买家的风险显而易见。至少比特币的供应量是固定的，一旦售罄，就真的消失了。

Although Bitcoin’s status as crypto is sometimes disputed by its advocates, it is generally considered to be part of the crypto family. Its finite supply distinguishes it from other forms, issued by various crypto companies, which are little more than homemade mints. Guess who will make all the loot on this second type of cryptocurrency: the people who issue it, naturally, as has been the case throughout history. This second type of crypto, embodied by Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, has no limits on how much can be issued, as long as the hype continues. But we know what happens when the tide goes out. If a private, unregulated company issues tokens, and calls these tokens money, the risk of being the last buyer should be reasonably obvious. At least with Bitcoin there is a fixed amount of the currency available and when it is gone, it’s all gone.

有人认为，即便加密货币最终沦为互联网时代的收藏品，就像数字版的宝可梦卡牌一样，区块链仍然是一项颠覆性的技术。但它究竟解决了什么问题？认为存在一个庞大而低效的全球支付系统，其浪费现象可以通过区块链来解决，这种想法即便并非毫无根据，也远没有人们声称的那么严重。目前已经有很多数字支付系统处理着数十亿笔以传统货币（尤其是美元）计价的在线交易。在一个旧货币已经运作良好的交易体系中，真的有必要引入一种新的货币维度吗？区块链技术——本质上是老式记账棒的数字版本——仍然是一种极其缓慢且耗能的账本，而且似乎缺乏足够的扩展性来处理数万亿美元的交易。每小时都有大量交易使用现有技术完成。与传统的信用卡或全球银行结算系统（尽管它们也存在一些问题，并且偶尔会遭受黑客攻击）相比，区块链仍处于起步阶段。

Some argue that even if cryptocurrencies end up as mere collectibles from the internet age, like digital Pokémon cards, blockchain is still a game-changing technology. But what problem is it solving? The idea that there is some large, inefficient global payments system whose wastefulness can be solved by blockchain appears to be, if not baseless, not as much of a problem as claimed. There are already plenty of digital payment systems processing billions of online transactions priced in regular money, particularly dollars. Is it necessary to add the extra dimension of a new money into an exchange where old money is working? Blockchain technology—essentially a digital version of an old-fashioned tallystick—remains an extremely slow, energy-intensive ledger, which appears to be insufficiently scalable to deal with the trillions of dollars of transactions that are made every hour using existing technologies. Compared to the plain old credit card or the global banking settlement systems—problematic as some may be and susceptible to occasional hacks as they sporadically are—blockchain remains in its infancy.

比特币是所有数字货币中持有量最大、知名度最高的，但它存在一个显而易见的问题：“比特币就是货币”的说法显然是错误的。正如我们所见，历史表明，货币真正发挥作用的关键特征之一是其价值必须稳定。这意味着货币需要管理。就日常交易而言，比特币实际上无法使用，因为它的价格波动剧烈。这种价格不稳定性源于基本的传统经济学原理：价格的涨跌正是因为比特币的供应量是固定的。正如我们从黄金的例子中所看到的，任何商品的固定供应量都无法根据需求的变化进行动态调整。

The most widely owned and best known of all the digital currencies, Bitcoin, has an obvious problem: the claim that “Bitcoin is money” is patently not true. As we’ve seen, history suggests that one of the key characteristics necessary for money to be truly useful is that its value must be stable. This means money must be managed. For everyday transactions, Bitcoin is unusable in practical terms because its price jumps all over the place. This instability in price comes down to basic traditional economics: the price moves up and down precisely because the supply of Bitcoin is fixed. As we saw with gold, a fixed supply of anything doesn’t allow dynamic adjustments in response to changes in demand.

随着比特币的普及和购买人数的增加，其价格上涨过快，这不利于其在交易中的应用。比特币的支持者有时会将价格飙升描绘成比特币是货币的证据，但事实恰恰相反。既然比特币相对于其他货币的价值都在上涨，为什么还要使用它呢？由于其供应量固定，比特币无法作为稳定的交换媒介，最终只能被囤积以赚取资本收益；它不再发挥货币的作用，而成为了一种资产。这种技术不具备可扩展性和脆弱性，再加上基本的供需关系，意味着加密资产甚至无法履行货币的三大基本功能：1）记账单位，2）交换媒介，3）价值储存手段。加密资产不配被称为加密货币，因为它们并非真正的货币。它们是代表某些人价值的代币——而且是赤裸裸投机的理想工具。正是这种特性使得加密资产成为一种理想的投机工具。投机和赌博的根源在于其波动性。谁会去赌一种枯燥乏味、稳定的资产呢？但正是这种特性，使其无法作为支付手段，进而无法作为货币使用。

As Bitcoin becomes popular and more people buy it, its price rises too quickly. This militates against it being used for transactions. Bitcoin promoters sometimes portray a spike in its price as evidence that it is money, when in fact the opposite is the case. Why spend Bitcoin when it’s going up in value against everything else? Due to its fixed supply, it can’t act as a stable medium of exchange and thus it ends up being hoarded for capital gain; rather than functioning as money, it becomes an asset of sorts. The unscalable and brittle technology coupled with basic supply and demand realities imply that crypto-assets are incapable of fulfilling even the three essential roles of money as: 1) a unit of account, 2) a medium of exchange, and 3) a store of value. Crypto assets don’t merit the name cryptocurrencies because they are not currencies. They are tokens that represent some value for someone—and they constitute a perfect vehicle for naked speculation. The property that renders crypto ideal for speculation and gambling is its volatility. Who would ever punt on a boring, stable asset? But this is the very same property that renders it dysfunctional as a means of payment and therefore as money.

一项资产？

An asset?

稍微思考一下投机和投资，就会发现另一个危险信号。加密代币真的算是资产吗？资产应该能带来持续的收益，让你的投资获得回报。与债券或股票不同，加密货币不会产生任何现金流或收入。加密货币不包含任何法律上的所有权。购买股票，你实际上是购买了一家真实公司的一部分所有权。购买债券，你也同时购买了对债券标的资产（无论是公司还是国家）的所有权。与这些投资不同，加密货币不会促进任何资本形成。购买公司股票的前提是，你的资金会流入公司，可能用于购买设备或拓展新市场，而你希望从中获利。这项投资的前景取决于诸多因素，包括潜在的经济活动。

A little bit of thinking about speculation and investment raises another red flag. Are crypto tokens even assets? An asset should have a flow of income paying you for your investment. Unlike a bond or an equity, cryptocurrencies generate no cash flow or income. Cryptocurrency entails no legal claim on anything. When you buy a share, you are buying a bit of a real company. When you buy a bond, you are also buying a claim on the assets underlying the bond, be it a company or a state. Unlike these other investments, crypto doesn’t contribute to any capital formation. When you buy the shares of a company, the understanding is that your money goes to the company and might be used to buy equipment or finance the expansion into a new market, from which you hope to profit. The prospect of this investment will be dependent on, among other things, underlying economic activity.

加密货币交易仅凭市场情绪，与此形成鲜明对比，它本质上是一种终极投机，一种可交易的赌博合约。这些代币的“市场”是一个零和博弈，任何一方的获利都必然以另一方的损失为代价。交易加密货币与更广泛的经济体系毫无关联；它就是赌博——并提供同样的刺激和成瘾性。但与赌博不同的是，加密货币市场不受监管。它们位于境外，缺乏透明度，并且极易受到内部人士的操纵，正如我们将在类似欺诈案审判中继续看到的那样。班克曼-弗里德的观点是，国家货币发行机构要对人民负责，这与加密货币的幻想截然不同，在加密货币的幻想中，发行机构可以是私人公司——一家拥有富有想象力的营销部门的数字印刷厂。

Trading on sentiment alone, crypto is by contrast the ultimate speculative punt, a tradable gambling contract. The “market” for these tokens is a zero-sum game in which any one participant’s gain has to be another’s loss. Trading cryptocurrency has nothing to do with the broader economy; it is gambling—and offers the same excitement and addiction. But unlike gambling, crypto markets are unregulated. They are offshore, opaque, and subject to a high degree of insider manipulation, as we will continue to see in fraud trials like Bankman-Fried’s. The state issuer of money is answerable to the people, unlike the crypto fantasy where the issuer can be a private company—a digital printing press with an imaginative marketing department.

还有其他类型的加密货币，即所谓的稳定币，它们是由法定货币储备支持的代币。这使得它们本质上只是披着其他外衣的货币市场基金。无论它们采取何种形式，事实仍然是，由私人公司发行并试图将其冒充货币的数字代币是一种盗窃行为。有一种数字货币预计很快将由中央银行推出，但这实际上只是换了种包装的纸币，仍然由国家机构发行。

There are other types of crypto, the so-called stable coins, that are tokens backed by holdings of fiat money. This makes them nothing more than money market funds dressed up as something else. Whatever form they take, the fact remains that digital tokens issued by a private company that tries to pass them off as money are a heist. There is a kind of digital currency that is expected to be launched imminently by central banks, but this is effectively nothing more than paper money in another guise, still issued by an organ of the state.

对整个社会而言，加密货币导致财富净转移，从通常较为贫困的参与者（包括那些沉迷于Xbox和Reddit的愤怒加密货币爱好者）转移到运营离岸交易所的复杂私人集团手中，而这些集团背后恰恰是加密货币本应打击的华尔街公司，这种做法显得格格不入。总而言之，至少就目前而言，加密货币作为投资和货币都失败了。其底层技术如今已有近20年的历史——与iPhone的诞生时间相同——除了犯罪活动和赌博之外，几乎没有其他应用。而且，如果像之前的黄金一样，加密货币的数量是固定的，那么它只会对那些已经拥有它的人有利。它的价格越高，他们就越富有。无论它是像加密货币支持者所说的“数字黄金”，还是真正的黄金，固定供应的弊端都显而易见。

For society in general, crypto results in a net wealth transfer from typically poorer punters—including those angry X- and Reddit-obsessed crypto bros—to sophisticated private cartels that operate the offshore exchanges, backed incongruously by the very Wall Street firms that crypto was supposed to crush. In aggregate, crypto, at least for now, fails as both an investment and as money. The underlying technology, now nearly twenty years old—the same age as the iPhone—has found little, if any, application beyond criminal activity and gambling. And if, like gold before it, a cryptocurrency’s quantity is fixed, it will be beneficial only to the people who already own it. The more its price goes up, the wealthier they become. It doesn’t matter if it is digital gold, as proponents of crypto like to say, or real gold—the drawbacks of a fixed supply are evident.

比特币原本应该被用来购买商品——那种传统的“货币作为交换媒介”的理念——但最终并未实现。相反，它逐渐被视为一种财富储存手段，并被数以百万计的人所信奉。随着价格上涨，尽管比特币本身并无任何基本面，但仍会有更多人被它吸引。价值或收益的积累。我们知道，维持资产价格上涨的最佳方法是让越来越多的人持有它。随着时间的推移，会有一大批人希望维持其价值，并为其造势。毕竟，他们的财富与比特币息息相关。他们会敦促监管机构支持、保护和推广比特币，最终推高或至少维持其价格。实现这一目标的最佳途径是通过拓展分销渠道。为了保护自身财富，比特币持有者已经与华尔街合作，通过交易所交易基金（ETF）向大众推广比特币。ETF是一种允许投资者更大规模、更透明地买卖比特币的机制。比特币持有者已经与他们曾经抨击为腐败、贪婪和破坏性的公司沆瀣一气。最初的另类抗议投资如今已成为主流。

Bitcoin was supposed to be used to buy stuff—that old “money as a medium of exchange” thing—but this never transpired. Instead, it has come to be seen as a store of wealth that many millions of people believe in. As its price rises, more people will be attracted to it, despite it having no fundamental value or income accruing to it. We know that the best way to keep an asset inflated is to have more and more people with a stake in it. In time, there will be a significant group of people with an interest in maintaining its value, talking it up. After all, their wealth is tied up in Bitcoin. They will lean on regulators to bolster it, protect it, disseminate it, and ultimately drive up or at least maintain its price. The best way to do this is through extended distribution channels. To protect their own wealth, the Bitcoiners have enlisted Wall Street to market Bitcoin to the masses via exchange trade funds, a mechanism that allows investors to buy and sell Bitcoin in greater numbers, and more transparently. Bitcoiners have got into bed with the very firms they once lambasted as corrupt, venal, and destructive. The original alternative protest investment has become mainstream.

与华尔街结盟并游说监管机构，这与比特币最初的动力相去甚远。比特币最初是押注西方政治秩序彻底崩溃和法定货币终结。比特币的早期采用者属于一个末日邪教，他们相信法定货币体系即将崩溃，陷入恶性通货膨胀，所有主要货币都将贬值，而比特币将从中脱颖而出，成为救世主。这种末日论倾向意味着，比特币的极端支持者往往会为可能削弱西方的政治势力摇旗呐喊，因此，在社交媒体上看到他们为普京领导的俄罗斯等敌视西方的政权喝彩，也就不足为奇了。

Allying with Wall Street and lobbying regulators is a long way from the original impetus for Bitcoin, which was at first a bet on the complete collapse of the Western political order and the end of fiat money. The early adopters of Bitcoin were part of a doomsday cult, who believed that fiat regimes were about to collapse in a bout of hyperinflation that would devalue all major currencies, and from which Bitcoin would emerge as the great savior. These Armageddonist tendencies mean Bitcoin’s more extreme promoters have tended to cheerlead political forces that might undermine the West, so finding them on social media applauding regimes such as Putin’s Russia, inimical to Western power, is not a surprise.

别误会——我不是在提供理财建议。人们可以自由支配自己的钱，包括购买比特币。我的观点是，就我理解的任何货币定义而言，比特币都算不上货币。比特币与其说是一种新的货币形式，不如说是一个金融游说团体。而且，和大多数游说团体一样，他们的目标是强迫当局接受他们的方案。为了增进其所有者的利益，那些将从其固定供应中获益最多的人。

Don’t get me wrong—I am not offering financial advice. People can do what they want with their money, including buying Bitcoin. My point is that Bitcoin is not money in any definition of money that I understand. Bitcoin is a financial lobby group more than a new form of money. And, like most lobby groups, the game is to force its agenda on the authorities to enhance the interests of its owners, those who stand to benefit most from its fixed supply.

2024年1月，经过广泛的游说，美国证券交易委员会首次批准了比特币基金，允许它们在主流市场交易，投资者无需亲自购买比特币。当一些富豪——比如那些早期以极低价格购入比特币并因此积累了巨额财富的人——游说政府将原本非法的事物合法化，并试图从中拉拢华尔街并从中获利时，警钟就应该敲响。如果这种做法还能为向小投资者出售比特币开辟渠道，而小投资者又会因政府批准基金而推高比特币价格，那么警钟就应该敲响得更加响亮、更加清晰。

In January 2024, after extensive lobbying, the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved Bitcoin funds for the first time, allowing them to be traded in the mainstream market without investors having to go through the process of acquiring Bitcoin themselves. When very rich people—in this case, the early adopters who bought Bitcoin for pennies and have therefore become astronomically wealthy—lobby the state to legitimize something that was explicitly intended to be illegitimate, and seek to enlist and enrich Wall Street in the process, alarm bells should ring. When this is pursued in a fashion that opens up avenues to sell Bitcoin to small investors, who will be excited by the higher prices that result from the government’s approval of the funds, those bells should ring louder and clearer.

多年来，我们看到货币是一种旨在解决问题的技术。我百思不得其解，比特币，乃至整个加密货币，究竟解决了什么问题？尽管比特币在美国主流投资市场已占据了一席之地，但加密货币似乎注定仍将处于边缘地位，成为其支持者和爱好者的痴迷对象，但在现实中却并不实用。比特币之于货币，正如世界语之于语言。

Over the years we have seen that money is a technology designed to solve a problem. I’m scratching my head as to what problem Bitcoin in particular and crypto in general actually solve. Despite the small foothold Bitcoin has gained in the mainstream US investment market, crypto looks set to remain on the fringes, a source of obsession for its supporters and aficionados, but not very useful or practical in reality. Bitcoin is to money what Esperanto is to language.

加密货币面临的最关键问题在于其私密性，而货币，如果运作良好且管理得当，则始终是公共的。尽管法定货币体系存在诸多缺陷，但它仍然是一个国家运营的体系。即使是最强大的商业银行也受到国家监管，如果认为有必要，监管力度还可以加强，就像从技术上讲，将欧洲美元市场纳入美国政府的管辖范围是完全可行的。我无法想象国家会放弃在其管辖范围内发行货币的权力，因为……这样做就等于将国家武器库中最强大的武器——资金——的控制权拱手让给私营部门。除非国家消亡，被其他事物取代，否则我们无法想象在什么情况下，金钱不再属于国家或其附属机构的掌控范围。金钱是如此强大的工具，绝不能轻易放弃。而且，一旦落入不法之徒之手，后果不堪设想。

The most critical problem for cryptocurrencies is that they are private and money, when it is functional and properly managed, is always public. For all its faults, the fiat system is still a state-run system. Even the most powerful commercial banks are under state supervision and could be more so if it were deemed necessary, just as it would technically be possible to bring the Eurodollar market within the American state’s remit. There is no world in which I can envisage the state giving up the power to issue money in its own jurisdiction, because to do so would be to give the private sector control over the most potent substance in the state’s armory. Unless the state withers away, replaced by something else, it is impossible to imagine circumstances where money is not the domain of the state or adjuncts of the state. It is simply too powerful a tool to give away. And it is too dangerous in the wrong hands.

现代货币理论

Modern monetary theory

大约在加密货币爱好者开始构想私人货币世界的同时，一些身处大学学术界的经济学家却提出，货币的未来将是公共的。现代货币理论（MMT）的倡导者，例如美国货币经济学家斯蒂芬妮·凯尔顿，认为传统的政府支出方式——以及对政府支出的限制——是错误的。传统观点认为，政府先征税，然后才支出税收所得。而MMT则认为顺序颠倒了，实际上，国家先印钞，后缴税。因此，这是一个“先支出后征税”的世界，而非“先征税后支出”的世界。这意味着，政治上对平衡收支的执着——政客们将国家财政与拥有固定预算的家庭进行比较——是建立在错误的假设之上的。MMT的支持者认为，由于国家发行货币，因此永远不会出现资金短缺。

Around the same time that crypto enthusiasts were first imagining a world of private money, some academic economists deep inside university departments were suggesting that the future of money would be public. Advocates of modern monetary theory (MMT), such as the US monetary economist Stephanie Kelton, argue that the traditional way of looking at government spending—and the constraints on government spending—is wrong. The traditional view holds that taxes are raised first, then the government spends the money that has been collected through taxation. MMT contends that this is back to front and that, in reality, the state prints money first and taxes are paid subsequently. So, it’s a spend first, tax later world rather than a tax first, spend later one. This would mean that the political obsession with balancing the books—where politicians compare the state finances to a household with a fixed budget—is built on false assumptions. Proponents of MMT argue that the state, because it issues money, can never run out of it.

这种思维方式的后果是，国家预算赤字实际上并不重要，或者至少不像我们通常认为的那样重要。我们经常听到评论员和经济学家谈论设定债务上限的必要性，仿佛一旦国家债务达到某个任意设定的数字，……国家会面临资金短缺。现代货币理论（MMT）认为，在发行本国货币的国家，这种情况不会发生：政府印钞量的唯一限制是通货膨胀，而MMT的支持者认为通货膨胀是由经济资源决定的。他们表示，当物价开始上涨时，政府应该提高税收以抑制消费需求，这样一来，经济就会降温，通胀压力也会随之降低。

The consequence of this type of thinking is that national budget deficits don’t really matter, or at least they don’t matter in the way we tend to think they do. We often hear commentators and economists talk about the need to set debt ceilings, as if once the national debt hits some arbitrary number, the country will run out of money. MMT suggests that this can’t happen in countries that issue their own currency: the only constraint on the amount of money the government can print is inflation, which advocates of MMT argue is determined by the resources of the economy. They say that when prices start to rise, the government should raise taxes to take the steam out of consumer demand and, in this way, the economy will cool down, as will inflationary pressure.

对于像美国这样发行全球储备货币的大型经济体而言，现代货币理论（MMT）意味着政府可以自由决定印钞的数量以及资金的用途。事实上，新冠疫情期间各国政府向被迫居家隔离的民众发放支票的货币政策实践，被MMT的信奉者视为政府可以直接印钞并直接发放给民众，而无需银行系统作为中间环节的证据。

For a large economy like the US, which issues the global reserve currency, the implication of MMT is that the government has discretion over how much money it creates and where it chooses to spend it. Indeed, the monetary experience during the Covid pandemic, where various governments issued checks to populations forced to stay at home, is seen by the MMT disciples as evidence that a government can simply print money and give it to the people without the need for the banking system in the middle.

我认同政府可能拥有比之前预想的更大的预算空间这一观点，也理解许多反对政府支出和干预的声音是出于意识形态驱动，但我并不确定货币的未来会如现代货币理论（MMT）学者所希望的那样发展。MMT面临着诸多实际困难。例如，在欧元区，各国并不发行自己的货币，而是使用由欧洲中央银行发行的共同货币——欧元。因此，欧元区各国政府无法像MMT支持者所描述的那样创造和使用货币。

I have some sympathy for the idea that governments might have more budgetary space in which to operate than previously thought, and I also understand that many of the voices arguing against government spending and intervention are ideologically driven, but I am not so sure that the future of money will pan out as the MMT academics hope. There are a number of practical difficulties facing MMT. In the Eurozone, for instance, countries do not issue their own currency, but instead use a common currency—the euro—issued by the European Central Bank. The governments of the individual countries in the group are therefore not able to create and spend money in the way that MMT proponents describe.

即使是像英国这样发行自己货币的国家，也会受到金融市场对该国货币纪律的看法所设定的实际预算限制。2022年，利兹·特拉斯政府试图通过增加借贷和减税来提振英国经济增长率，但这一失败的尝试引发了英镑和英国国债市场的挤兑。投资者因担忧通胀而抛售英国资产。尽管理论上英国可以随意发行英镑，但实际上它受到国际金融市场及其对政策诚信的评判的制约。

Even countries that issue their own currency, such as the UK, will have practical budgetary constraints set by the financial markets’ perception of the nation’s monetary discipline. In 2022, the Liz Truss government’s ill-fated attempt to boost the UK growth rate by increasing borrowing and cutting taxes led to a run on the currency and the gilt market. Investors dumped UK assets, fearing inflation. Even though, theoretically, the UK can issue as much sterling as it wants, in practice it is hemmed in by the realities of the international financial markets, and their view of policy probity.

对于比特币等完全私有货币的支持者，或是部分现代货币理论（MMT）经济学家所支持的完全公共货币的支持者而言，主要障碍在于这两种方案虽然理论上很有吸引力，但实际上却不切实际。正如我们所见，加密货币并非一种可靠的交易媒介，而通货膨胀和债券市场的硬性制约因素是真实存在的，这使得MMT远没有听起来那么激进。

The main obstacle for proponents of exclusively private money such as Bitcoin, or exclusively public money as endorsed by some of the MMT economists, is that both options, while theoretically interesting, are impractical. Crypto, as we have seen, is not a serious means of exchange, while the hard constraints of inflation and the bond market are real and render MMT far less radical than it sounds.

回到非洲

Back to Africa

本书中，我们看到货币体系不断进行创新，以适应经济发展的需求。货币如同语言一样，具有生命力；如同新词、新短语或新习语的出现，每一次创新都提升了货币的实用性；而实用性越强，使用就越广泛。我们目前在非洲就看到了这种货币创新试错过程的例证。

Over the course of this book we have seen incremental innovations in money emerging to suit the demands of the economy. Like language, money is a living thing, and like the adoption of a new word, phrase, or idiom, each innovation made money more useful; the more useful it was, the more used it became. We are seeing an example of this trial-and-error process of monetary innovation playing out right now in Africa.

为了充分发挥其潜力，货币必须易于使用且被尽可能多的人接受；它必须是丰富且分散的，而不是稀缺且集中的。如果货币能够分发到更多人手中，并被那些此前被排除在货币世界之外的人们接受为稳定的交换媒介，那么其影响将是立竿见影的，其后果也将是显著的。

To achieve its potential, money must be usable and acceptable to the widest possible audience; it must be abundant and diffuse rather than scarce and concentrated. If money can be dispensed into the hands of more people, and is accepted as a stable medium of exchange for people who were previously locked out of the monetary world, the impact can be immediate and the consequences remarkable.

当社交媒体和华尔街都在大力宣传加密货币，其名人拥趸们也在超级碗广告中大肆吹捧时，一种更具吸引力的货币形式却在一个意想不到的地区悄然兴起。在非洲大部分地区，发展的主要障碍是缺乏信贷和银行服务。这两项创新使货币更加有效——信贷使人们能够投资未来，而银行服务则为人们提供了储蓄和借贷的平台。许多非洲人，尤其是农村地区的非洲人，在日常生活中很少见到银行，但他们都拥有手机。2007年，也就是比特币诞生的前一年，一种名为M-Pesa的更巧妙的货币悄然问世，几乎没有引起任何关注或投资。事实证明，它确实可以作为货币使用，解决了实际问题——这与加密货币截然不同，后者至今仍是一个寻找问题的解决方案。

While social media and Wall Street were heralding crypto and its celebrity evangelists were hyping it up in Superbowl ads, a far more compelling form of money was emerging—organically—in an unlikely region. In much of Africa, a major impediment to development is a lack of credit and banking, two innovations that make money more effective—credit because it allows people to invest in the future, and banking because it is the platform where people save and borrow. Many, particularly rural, Africans rarely see a bank in their day-to-day lives, but they do have mobile phones. In 2007, only a year before Bitcoin was created, a more ingenious currency called M-Pesa was being introduced, with little fanfare or investment. It would turn out to be useful as money, solving a problem—unlike crypto, which remains a solution looking for a problem.

M-Pesa（M代表移动，pesa在斯瓦希里语中意为“钱”）将手机话费余额转化为货币。这是一种自下而上的适应性创新，它响应了实际需求，解决了实际问题，并被广泛采用。在肯尼亚的街角，你会看到小贩兜售“预付费”手机话费。他们是货币和社会变革的推动者。M-Pesa利用基本的短信技术，让肯尼亚人能够往手机里充值，使用手机的借记和贷记功能进行买卖，通过手机转账，以及通过手机话费进行借贷和储蓄。肯尼亚领先的移动电话运营商Safaricom承诺将手机通话时长兑换成当地货币先令。此举使手机通话时长成为一种货币，商业银行则负责促成兑换。在肯尼亚农村，人们会向农民提供小额贷款，帮助他们度过收成难关，这与我们之前描述的中世纪早期的“放贷”制度颇为相似。借出的“货币”是手机话费余额，其价值人人皆知。贫困人口也开始使用这种基本的银行工具，手机支付迅速发展起来。

M-Pesa (M is for mobile and pesa is Swahili for “money”) turns mobile phone credit into money. It is a bottom-up adaptation that responded to a real demand and solved a real problem, and it became widely adopted. On street corners in Kenya, you’ll see hawkers selling “pay as you go” mobile phone airtime. They are agents of an incipient monetary and social transformation. Using basic text messaging technology, M-Pesa allows Kenyans to deposit money on their phones, buy and sell using the debit and credit functions on their phones, transfer money via their phones, and borrow and save through phone credit. Safaricom, the country’s leading mobile phone provider, undertook to cash mobile phone minutes for the local currency, shillings. This move allowed mobile phone minutes to become currency, with commercial banks facilitating the exchange. In rural Kenya, small loans are extended to tide farmers over from harvest to harvest, not unlike the “putting out” system we described in the early medieval period. The “money” loaned is phone credit, whose value is understood by everyone. Once poorer people accessed this basic banking tool, phone-based money took off.

M-Pesa降低了银行服务的成本，并提高了人们获取资金的便利性。在M-Pesa出现之前，由于缺乏完善的银行系统，肯尼亚农村地区的人们只能将一袋现金交给巴士司机，而司机通常会收取高达现金价值30%的费用才能将钱送到偏远村庄。而且，这些钱往往就此不知所踪。有了M-Pesa，资金通过手机话费转账，然后可以用话费在当地商店购买生活用品。无需巴士司机，也就没有了风险。如今，肯尼亚各地有5万家注册代理商，它们就像小型银行一样运作，70%的人口都在使用M-Pesa，而该国30%的GDP都来自M-Pesa ^。

M-Pesa has reduced the cost of banking and increased access to money. Without a functioning banking system, before M-Pesa, the way to send money home to the Kenyan countryside was to give a bag of cash to a bus driver who would charge up to 30 percent of its value to deliver it to a remote village. Often, the money simply disappeared. With M-Pesa, the money is transferred via phone credit and the phone credit is then used to buy supplies in the local shop. No bus driver, no risk. Today, there are 50,000 registered agents acting as tiny banks all over Kenya, and 70 percent of the population use M-Pesa while 30 percent of the country’s GDP is generated via M-Pesa.²

货币的演变源于经济的演变。以加密货币和M-Pesa为例。前者吸引了数十亿美元的投资、铺天盖地的报纸报道、不间断的广告宣传，最终也获得了华尔街的支持，然而它却未能达到人们的预期。相比之下，M-Pesa——其诞生的初衷是为了应对贫困而非富裕——却蓬勃发展，并可能成为非洲大部分地区的货币模式。加密货币之所以举步维艰，是因为它未能通过所有经济创新都必须经历的进化考验。它解决了什么问题？没有。它是当时应对挑战或需求的最佳方案吗？不是。而M-Pesa，这个拼凑而成的、有机发展的解决方案，是当时解决肯尼亚困境的最佳方案吗？是的。

Money evolves because the economy evolves. Take the difference between crypto and M-Pesa. The former attracted billions of dollars of investment, oceans of newspaper coverage, ceaseless advertising campaigns, and ultimately the support of Wall Street’s wallet, and yet it has failed to live up to the hype. In contrast, M-Pesa—which was conceived in response to poverty, not affluence—is thriving and could be the model for money in much of Africa. Crypto has struggled because it failed the evolutionary test that all economic innovations must pass. What problem did it solve? None. Was it the best design to fit the challenge or requirement at the time? No. Was M-Pesa, that cobbled together, organic solution, the best design to fix the Kenyan dilemma at the time? Yes.

最近，当我走进都柏林圣三一学院的大门时——多年前我正是在这里开始学习货币经济学——我不禁思考起货币的演变。带着一种令人愉悦的循环感，我即将去教授我学生时代就为之着迷的这门学科。在此期间……三十年来，金钱的发展势不可挡，即使在世界最偏远的地区也是如此；肯尼亚的职业女性现在可以用手机立即向农村的母亲汇款。

Recently, as I walked through the front gates of Trinity College Dublin, where I first studied monetary economics many years ago, I considered the evolution of money. With a pleasing sense of circularity, I was on my way to teach the same subject I had become fascinated by as a student. In the intervening three decades, the progress of money has been relentless, even in the remotest parts of the world; a working woman in Kenya can now instantly send money home to her mother in the countryside using her mobile phone.

如今，我们高度发达的文明拥有电动汽车、智能手机、疫苗、咖啡机、夜总会、繁荣的城市、抽象艺术、流行音乐、社交网络、核武器、娱乐性药物、避孕药、美容正畸、精密工程、人工智能、外卖烤肉店以及全球供应链——而我们80亿人却生活在这个拥挤的星球上。如此卓越的组织能力、生产力、创新能力和集体智慧并非源于意识形态、宗教甚至武力，而是源于金钱。金钱如同我们称之为全球经济的这个高度复杂、不断适应变化的有机体的中枢神经系统。金钱如同普罗米修斯的工具，推动着人类发展，并将继续推动人类发展，它已与我们文明的肌理密不可分。金钱是人类的标志性技术，在过去的五千年里，我们智人已经变成了“冥河生物”——一个适应金钱并随着金钱不断变化而进化的物种。

Today, our advanced civilization has electric cars, smartphones, vaccines, coffee machines, dance clubs, thriving cities, abstract art, pop music, social networks, nuclear weapons, recreational drugs, contraceptive pills, cosmetic orthodontics, precision engineering, artificial intelligence, takeaway tandooris, and global supply chains—and 8 billion of us manage to live on this crowded planet. Such feats of organization, productivity, innovation, and collective brainpower are not enabled by ideology or religion or even force, but by money. Money acts as the central nervous system of that highly complicated, always adapting organism we call the global economy. A Promethean tool, money has propelled and continues to propel humankind, and it is woven inextricably into the fabric of our civilization. Money is a defining technology of humanity, and over the past five millennia, we Homo sapiens have become plutophytes—a species adapted by and constantly changing with money.

M-Pesa体现了货币的演变，它能够自发地适应环境并蓬勃发展。货币的发展历来都是有机的，并将继续如此。谁又能预料到，手机普及仅仅几年后，就会发展成银行，手机充值卡就会变成货币呢？近年来，M-Pesa在刚果民主共和国广受欢迎，而我们数千年前的研究正是从伊尚戈骨开始的，地点就在同一河流流域。货币的演变，如同人类的演变，总是不断给我们带来惊喜。

M-Pesa is the embodiment of money’s evolution, spontaneously adapting and thriving in response to its environment. Money has always developed organically and it will continue to do so. Who would have predicted that only a few years after they were widely adopted, mobile phones would become banks and phone credit would become money? In recent years, M-Pesa has been embraced in the Democratic Republic of Congo by people living in the same river basin where our investigations began thousands of years ago with the Ishango Bone. The evolution of money, like the evolution of humanity, constantly surprises.

介绍

INTRODUCTION

0.    这段引文是由经济学家迈克尔·V·怀特和库尔特·舒勒在《回顾：谁说过“放纵货币”：凯恩斯还是列宁？》一文中发现的，该文发表于《经济展望杂志》第 23 卷第 2 期，2009 年春季，第 213-222 页。

0.    This quote was unearthed by economists Michael V. White and Kurth Schuler in “Retrospectives: Who Said ‘Debauch the Currency’: Keynes or Lenin?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 23, no. 2, spring 2009, pp. 213–22.

0.    Lawrence Malkin，《克鲁格的人：纳粹秘密伪造阴谋和 19 号牢房的囚犯》，纽约：Little, Brown 出版社，2006 年，第 177 页。

0.    Lawrence Malkin, Krueger’s Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19, New York: Little, Brown, 2006, p. 177.

0.    同上，第 62 页。

0.    Ibid., p. 62.

0.    James C. Scott，《逆流而上：早期国家的深层历史》，纽黑文：耶鲁大学出版社，2017 年，第 1 章。

0.    James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017, chapter 1.

• 抽象思维
• abstraction/abstract thinking
• 会计
• accountancy
• 阿达莫，大师
• Adamo, Maestro
• 非洲
• Africa
• 阿戈拉（希腊集市）
• agora (Greek marketplace)
• 花剌子模
• al-Khwarizmi
• 亚历山大大帝
• Alexander the Great
• 亚历山大
• Alexandria
• 代数
• algebra
• 算法
• algorithms
• 阿利吉耶里、但丁；神曲
• Alighieri, Dante; The Divine Comedy
• 亚马逊雨林
• Amazon rainforest
• 美国革命（1765–1783）；另见美国
• American Revolution (1765–83); See also USA
• 哥伦布发现了美洲。
• Americas, Columbus discovers
• 阿姆斯特丹
• Amsterdam
• 英比印度橡胶勘探公司（ABIR）
• Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company (ABIR)
• 动物精神
• animal spirits
• 年金
• annuity
• 安东尼尼安
• antoninianus
• 托马斯·阿奎那
• Aquinas, Thomas
• 阿拉伯人
• Arabs
• 阿拉伯数学/数字（“撒拉逊魔法”）
• Arabic mathematics/numerals (“Saracen magic”)
• 亚里士多德
• Aristotle
• 阿塔薛西斯二世，国王
• Artaxerxes II, King
• Arte della Lana（羊毛织工协会）
• Arte della Lana (wool weavers’ guild)
• 工匠
• artisan
• 资产
• assets
• 资产支持证券
• asset-backed security
• 银行和
• banks and
• 信贷周期和
• credit cycle and
• 加密货币和
• cryptocurrency and
• 第一次世界大战和
• First World War and
• 全球金融危机（2008 年）和
• Global Financial Crisis (2008) and
• 八卦和
• gossip and
• 纸币和
• paper money and
• 魏玛共和国和
• Weimar Republic and
• 分配
• assignat
• 阿塔图尔克，凯末尔
• Atatürk, Kemal
• 雅典
• Athens
• 大西洋
• Atlantic Ocean
• 奥古斯都皇帝
• Augustus, Emperor
• 奥地利帝国
• Austrian Empire
• 阿兹特克帝国
• Aztec Empire
• 巴比伦人
• Babylonians
• 巴格达
• Baghdad
• 资产负债表
• balance sheets
• 英格兰银行
• Bank of England
• 路易斯安那银行
• Bank of Louisiana
• 银行/银行业务
• banks/banking
• 银行业的发展演变
• banking industry, evolution of
• 中央银行看到中央银行
• central banks see central banks
• 崩溃信息请查看单个崩溃名称
• crashes see individual crash name
• 信贷市场和
• credit markets and
• 荷兰帝国和
• Dutch Empire and
• 佛罗伦萨，在
• Florence, emergence of in
• 银行间贷款市场
• interbank loan market
• 法国大革命时期的法律和
• Law/revolutionary France and
• 投资银行家
• merchant banker
• 中产阶级和
• middle class and
• 离岸银行
• offshore banks
• 罗马
• Roman
• 美国和
• USA and
• 另请参阅各类银行
• See also individual type of bank
• 班克曼-弗里德，萨姆
• Bankman-Fried, Sam
• 破产
• bankruptcy
• 巴林银行
• Barings
• 大麦
• barley
• 物物交换
• barter
• 基本数
• base numbers
• 鲍姆，L.弗兰克：《绿野仙踪》
• Baum, L. Frank: The Wizard of Oz
• 贝尔斯登倒闭（2008 年）
• Bear Stearns, collapse of (2008)
• 蜂蜡
• beeswax
• 贝贾亚
• Bejaia
• 比利时刚果
• Belgian Congo
• 柏林非洲会议（1884-1885）
• Berlin Conference on Africa (1884–1885)
• 本·伯南克
• Bernanke, Ben
• 自行车
• bicycle
• 汇票
• bill of exchange
• 国票
• billets d’état
• 比特币
• Bitcoin
• 黑死病
• Black Death
• 黑市
• black market
• 区块链
• blockchain
• 乔万尼·薄伽丘
• Boccaccio, Giovanni
• 十日谈
• Decameron
• 布尔战争（1899–1902）
• Boer War (1899–1902)
• 波拿巴，拿破仑
• Bonaparte, Napoleon
• 债券
• bonds
• 美国内战和
• American Civil War and
• 美国革命和
• American Revolution and
• 分配
• assignat
• 债券市场
• bond markets
• 债券收益率
• bond yield
• 加密货币和
• cryptocurrencies and
• 第一次世界大战/魏玛共和国
• First World War/Weimar Republic and
• 荷兰和
• Holland and
• 垃圾债券
• junk bond
• 市政债券
• municipal bonds
• 永久债券
• perpetual bond
• 量化宽松和
• quantitative easing and
• 国债
• treasury bonds
• 西德和
• West Germany and
• 簿记
• bookkeeping
• 复式记账法
• double-entry
• 繁荣-萧条周期
• boom-bust cycles
• 自下而上的经济
• bottom-up economy
• 婆罗门，中央银行
• Brahmins, central bank
• 脑容量
• brain size
• 英国
• Britain
• 霸菱救助
• Barings bailout
• 黑色星期三
• Black Wednesday
• 中央银行，参见英格兰银行
• central bank see Bank of England
• 殖民主义
• colonialism
• 为摧毁外汇而使用的卑鄙手段
• dirty tricks employed to destroy foreign currency
• 第一次世界大战，参见第一次世界大战
• First World War and see First World War
• 大选（1918 年）
• General Election (1918)
• 光荣革命
• Glorious Revolution
• 印度和
• India and
• 工业革命和
• industrial revolution and
• 第二次世界大战，请参阅第二次世界大战。
• Second World War and see Second World War
• 南海泡沫
• South Sea Bubble
• 英国东印度公司
• British East India Company
• 布莱恩，威廉·詹宁斯
• Bryan, William Jennings
• 预算赤字
• budget deficit
• 牛陷阱
• bull trap
• 德国联邦银行
• Bundesbank
• 伯克，埃德蒙
• Burke, Edmund
• 伯尔，亚伦
• Burr, Aaron
• 商业文件
• business papers
• 拜占庭帝国
• Byzantine Empire
• 加州淘金热
• California gold rush
• 卡隆，查尔斯·亚历山大·德
• Calonne, Charles Alexandre de
• 加尔文主义者
• Calvinists
• 蜡烛
• candles
• 首都
• capital
• 中央银行家和
• central bankers and
• 加密货币和
• cryptocurrency and
• 欧洲美元市场和
• Eurodollar market and
• 演化经济学和
• evolutionary economy and
• 佛罗伦萨银行家和
• Florentine bankers and
• 法国大革命和
• French Revolution and
• 全球化和
• globalization and
• 荷兰和
• Holland and
• 工业革命和
• industrial revolution and
• 密西西比公司和
• Mississippi Company and
• 市场起源
• origins of market for
• 永久债券和
• perpetual bond and
• 印刷机和
• printing press and
• 罗马人和
• Romans and
• 苏伊士运河和
• Suez Canal and
• 美国和
• US and
• 风险投资
• venture capital
• 资本主义
• capitalism
• 卡马克，乔治
• Carmack, George
• 附带权益
• carried interest
• 罗杰·凯斯门特
• Casement, Roger
• 大教堂
• cathedrals
• 天主教
• Catholic Church
• 中央银行另见各个中央银行名称
• central bank See also individual central bank name
• 爱尔兰中央银行
• Central Bank of Ireland
• 查看
• check
• 中国
• China
• 基督教
• Christianity
• 安吉莉卡·丘奇
• Church, Angelica
• 西塞罗：《论义务》
• Cicero: De Officiis
• 电影
• cinema
• 伦敦金融城
• City of London
• 克拉曼，莉兹
• Claman, Liz
• 克拉里昂自行车俱乐部
• Clarion Cycle Club
• 号角
• Clarion, The
• 克劳迪娜王朝
• Claudine dynasty
• 克利尔库斯
• Clearchus
• 克里斯提尼
• Cleisthenes
• 克利夫兰，格罗弗
• Cleveland, Grover
• 钟
• clock
• 铸币
• coinage
• 基督教和
• Christianity and
• 美国铸币法（1792 年）
• Coinage Act, US (1792)
• 信用和
• credit and
• 加密货币（参见加密货币）
• crypto see cryptocurrency
• 贬值
• debasing
• 佛罗伦萨/弗洛林
• Florence/florin
• 德国，中世纪
• Germany, Middle Ages
• 吕底亚金的介绍
• introduction of Lydian gold
• 罗马
• Roman
• 西西里岛和
• Sicily and
• 银圆
• silver dollar
• 另请参阅单个硬币名称
• See also individual coin name
• 科尔伯特，让
• Colbert, Jean
• 集体智慧
• collective intelligence
• 科利森，约翰
• Collison, John
• 殖民主义
• colonialism
• 克里斯托弗·哥伦布
• Columbus, Christopher
• 商业银行
• commercial banks
• 商法
• commercial law
• 商品
• commodities
• 商品货币
• commodity money
• 西方公司（Compagnie d'Occident）
• Compagnie d’Occident (Company of the West)
• 柯南·道尔，亚瑟
• Conan Doyle, Arthur
• 刚果自由邦
• Congo Free State
• 刚果改革协会
• Congo Reform Association
• 刚果河
• Congo River
• 维也纳会议（1814年）
• Congress of Vienna (1814)
• 康涅狄格妥协方案
• Connecticut Compromise
• 康拉德，约瑟夫：《黑暗之心》
• Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
• 美国宪法
• Constitution, US
• 制宪会议（1787年），费城
• Constitutional Convention (1787), Philadelphia
• 大陆货币
• Continental currency
• 合同
• contracts
• 烹饪
• cooking
• 铜
• copper
• 科尔特斯，埃尔南
• Cortés, Hernán
• 伪造/仿冒
• counterfeiting/forgery
• 计数，起源
• counting, origins of
• 雅各布·考克西
• Coxey, Jacob
• 创造力
• creativity
• 信用
• credit
• 资产负债表和
• balance sheets and
• 信用卡
• credit card
• 信贷危机/信贷紧缩
• credit crises/credit crunch
• 信贷周期
• credit cycle
• 信用评级
• credit ratings
• 佛罗伦萨经济和
• Florentine economy and
• 信用证
• letter of credit
• M-Pesa 并查看M-Pesa
• M-Pesa and see M-Pesa
• 罗马帝国和
• Roman Empire and
• 克罗伊索斯国王
• Croesus, King
• 十字军东征
• Crusades
• 加密货币
• cryptocurrency
• 楔形文字
• cuneiform
• 货币
• currency
• 加密货币
• cryptocurrency
• 贬值
• debasing
• 十进制
• decimalized
• 贬值
• devaluation
• 电子的
• electronic
• 对信仰
• faith in
• 菲亚特
• fiat
• 金融和
• finance and
• 黄金，看看黄金
• gold and see gold
• 通货膨胀，并观察通货膨胀
• inflation and see inflation
• 公开市场操作
• open market operations
• 储备货币
• reserve currency
• 另请参阅个别货币名称
• See also individual currency name
• 小塞勒斯
• Cyrus the Younger
• 黑暗时代
• Dark Ages

• 查尔斯·达尔文
• Darwin, Charles

• 达蒂尼，弗朗切斯科·迪·马尔科
• Datini, Francesco di Marco
• 债务
• debt
• 天花板
• ceilings
• 法国国民
• French national
• 德国/魏玛和
• Germany/Weimar and
• 全球金融危机（2008 年）和
• Global Financial Crisis (2008) and
• 古腾堡和
• Gutenberg and
• 美索不达米亚和
• Mesopotamia and
• MMT和
• MMT and
• 罗马帝国和
• Roman Empire and
• 美国国家
• USA national
• 十进制化
• decimalization
• 默认
• default
• 通货紧缩
• deflation
• 老德里
• Delhi, Old
• 民主
• democracy
• 刚果民主共和国
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• 民主党
• Democratic Party
• 民主党全国代表大会（1896年）
• Democratic National Convention (1896)
• 银币
• denarius
• 德国马克
• deutsche mark
• 贬值
• devaluation
• 数字货币另见加密货币
• digital currency See also cryptocurrency
• 戴克里先皇帝
• Diocletian, Emperor
• 第欧根尼
• Diogenes
• 狄俄尼索斯
• Dionysus
• 迪士尼，沃尔特
• Disney, Walt
• 迪克斯
• dix
• 美元，美国
• dollar, United States
• 出生
• birth of
• 十进制货币
• decimalized currency
• 数字支付系统和
• digital payment systems and
• 迪克斯和
• dix and
• 欧洲美元市场及欧洲美元市场概览
• Eurodollar market and see Eurodollar market
• 黄金标准和
• Gold Standard and
• 储备货币
• reserve currency
• 驯化
• domestication
• 赌徒马布斯博士
• Dr Mabuse, the Gambler
• 德拉克马
• drachma
• 德雷赫姆片剂
• Drehem tablet
• 都柏林
• Dublin
• 邓巴，罗宾
• Dunbar, Robin
• 亨利·邓达斯
• Dundas, Henry
• 邓禄普工业
• Dunlop Industries
• 邓洛普，约翰·博伊德
• Dunlop, John Boyd
• 荷兰共和国
• Dutch Republic
• 荷兰东印度公司（VOC）和
• Dutch East India Company (VOC) and
• 经济奇迹
• economic miracle in
• 彼得大帝和
• Peter the Great and
• 郁金香狂热症（Tulpenwoerde）
• Tulipmania (Tulpenwoerde)
• 埃布苏斯
• Ebusus
• 经济学
• economics
• 基础
• basis of
• 古典经济学
• classical economics
• 经济学，概念
• economy, concept of
• 经济学家
• economists
• 货币经济学
• monetary economics
• 网络经济学
• network economics
• 单词
• word
• 《经济学人》
• Economist, The
• 宽容法令
• Edict of Tolerance
• 利己主义者
• Egoist, The
• 埃及
• Egypt
• 爱因斯坦，阿尔伯特
• Einstein, Albert
• 电磁波
• electromagnetic waves
• 电子货币
• electronic currency
• 琥珀金/白金
• electrum/white gold
• 经验主义
• empiricism
• 启示
• Enlightenment
• 企业家
• entrepreneur
• 平衡
• equilibrium
• 尤布勒斯
• Eubulus
• 欧元
• euro
• 欧洲美元市场
• Eurodollar market
• 欧洲中央银行
• European Central Bank
• 进化论
• evolution, theory of
• 演化经济
• evolutionary economy
• 汇率
• exchange rate
• 交换价值
• exchange value
• 农业/农耕
• farming/agriculture

• 《联邦党人文集》
• Federalist Papers, The

• 封建制度
• feudal system

• 法定货币
• fiat money

• 斐波那契
• Fibonacci

• 金融
• finance

• 朱塞佩·菲奥雷利
• Fiorelli, Giuseppe

• 火
• fire

• 第一次世界大战（1914-1918）
• First World War (1914–18)

• 佛罗伦萨
• Florence

• 弗洛林
• florin
• 福拉罗
• follaro
• 耻骨力
• Force Publique
• 外资
• foreign investment
• 伪造
• forgery
• 福克斯，查尔斯·詹姆斯
• Fox, Charles James
• 福克斯新闻
• Fox News
• 部分准备金银行
• fractional reserve banking
• 法郎
• franc
• 法国
• France
• 指派和
• assignat and
• 十进制化
• decimalization in
• 法国大革命（1789年）
• French Revolution (1789)
• 法律与金融创新
• Law and financial innovation in
• 塔列朗和金融创新，参见塔列朗-佩里戈尔，主教查尔斯-莫里斯·德
• Talleyrand and financial innovation in see Talleyrand-Périgord, bishop Charles-Maurice de
• 空闲时间
• free time
• 法属路易斯安那
• French Louisiana
• 弗洛伊德，西格蒙德
• Freud, Sigmund
• FTX
• FTX
• 富格尔银行家族
• Fugger banking family
• “创造性破坏的狂风”
• “gales of creative destruction”
• 加里恩努斯皇帝
• Gallienus, Emperor
• 赌博
• gambling
• 通用银行
• General Bank
• 热那亚
• Genoa
• 乔治一世国王
• George I, King
• 德国
• Germany
• 柏林墙倒塌（1989年11月11日）
• Berlin Wall, fall of (11 November 1989)
• 铸币
• coinage in
• 路德/宗教改革，参见马丁·路德
• Luther/Reformation and see Luther, Martin
• 专利
• patents in
• 印刷机，并查看印刷机
• printing press and see printing press
• （1990 年）重新统一
• reunification of (1990)
• 战争，并查看具体的战争名称
• wars and see individual war name
• 魏玛共和国
• Weimar Republic
• 西德
• West Germany
• 眼镜，光学
• glasses, optical
• 全球金融危机
• global financial crises
• （1892年）
• (1892)
• （2008）
• (2008)
• 全球化
• globalization
• 戈多芬勋爵
• Godolphin, Lord
• 金子
• gold
• 美国/美国和
• America/US and
• 加密货币和
• crypto and
• 法定货币和
• fiat money and
• 弗洛林和
• florin and
• 黄金标准
• Gold Standard
• 吕底亚金币的介绍
• Lydian gold coins, introduction of
• 新世界和
• New World and
• 罗马
• Roman
• 魏玛共和国和
• Weimar Republic and
• 戈斯拉尔
• Goslar
• 闲话
• gossip
• 古尔德，杰伊
• Gould, Jay
• 古尔奈，文森特·德
• Gournay, Vincent de
• 谷物
• grains
• 大萧条（1929-1939年）
• Great Depression (1929–39)
• 希腊
• Greece
• 希腊帝国、金融和
• Greek Empire, finance and
• 吕底亚黄金和
• Lydian gold and
• 绿钞
• greenbacks
• 公会
• guilds
• 公爵
• guilder
• 约翰内斯·古腾堡
• Gutenberg, Johannes
• 吉格斯王
• Gyges, King
• 亚历山大·汉密尔顿
• Hamilton, Alexander
• 深思熟虑
• hard thinking
• 对冲借款人
• hedge borrower
• 对冲汇率风险
• hedge exchange-rate risk
• 海明威，欧内斯特
• Hemingway, Ernest
• 亨利八世国王
• Henry VIII, King
• 希罗多德
• Herodotus
• 海因里希·赫兹
• Hertz, Heinrich
• 海因里希·希姆莱
• Himmler, Heinrich
• 印度-阿拉伯数字
• Hindu-Arabic numerals
• 科斯岛的希波克拉底
• Hippocrates of Kos
• 伊斯兰历（希吉拉历）
• Hijri calendar, Islamic
• 阿道夫·希特勒
• Hitler, Adolf
• 荷兰。参见荷兰共和国
• Holland. See Dutch Republic
• 神圣罗马帝国
• Holy Roman Empire
• 荷马
• Homer
• 约翰·霍布隆
• Houblon, John
• 住房市场
• housing market
• 胡格诺派教徒
• Huguenots
• 百年战争（1337–1453）
• Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453)
• 狩猎采集者
• hunter-gatherers
• 恶性通货膨胀
• hyperinflation
• 伊本·哈瓦斯 (Ibn al-Hawwàs)，阿格里真托埃米尔和卡斯特罗乔瓦尼
• Ibn al-Hawwàs, Emir of Agrigento and Castrogiovanni

• 伊本·图姆纳，叙拉古和卡塔尼亚埃米尔
• Ibn Thumna, Emir of Syracuse and Catania

• 收入
• income
• 控制
• controls
• 每人
• per head
• 印度
• India
• 印度-阿拉伯数字
• Hindu-Arabic numerals
• 独立（1947）
• independence (1947)
• 印度兵变（1857年）
• Indian Mutiny (1857)
• 赦免信
• indulgence, letter of
• 工业革命
• Industrial Revolution
• 不等式
• inequality
• 通货膨胀另见恶性通货膨胀
• inflation See also hyperinflation
• 创新。参见具体的创新名称。
• innovation. See individual innovation name
• 保险
• insurance
• 银行间贷款市场
• interbank loan market
• 利率
• interest rates
• 国际货币基金组织
• International Monetary Fund
• 投资
• investment
• assignat 并查看assignat
• assignat and see assignat
• 商业类投资者
• commercial class of investor
• 荷兰帝国和
• Dutch Empire and
• 佛罗伦萨和
• Florence and
• 来自欧洲的外国投资、殖民主义和
• foreign investment out of Europe, colonialism and
• 投资银行
• investment banking
• 法律与
• Law and
• 动量投资者
• momentum investor
• 印刷机和
• printing press and
• 上市公司和
• public company and
• 罗马
• Roman
• 特殊目的收购公司
• SPACs
• 价值投资者
• value investor
• 爱尔兰
• Ireland
• 伊尚戈骨
• Ishango Bone
• 伊什努纳法典
• Ishnuna Code of Law
• 伊斯兰教
• Islam
• 伊斯梅尔帕夏，埃及赫迪夫
• Ismail Pasha, khedive of Egypt
• 货币发行者
• “issuer” of money
• 杰伊，约翰
• Jay, John
• 托马斯·杰斐逊
• Jefferson, Thomas
• 耶稣
• Jesus
• 犹太人
• Jews
• 吉兹亚模型
• jizya model
• 乔伊斯，伊娃
• Joyce, Eva
• 乔伊斯，詹姆斯
• Joyce, James
• 价格合理
• just price
• 凯尔顿，斯蒂芬妮
• Kelton, Stephanie
• 肯尼亚
• Kenya
• 凯恩斯，约翰·梅纳德
• Keynes, John Maynard
• 克鲁格，伯恩哈德
• Krueger, Bernhard
• 库希姆
• Kushim
• 拉波，塞尔
• Lapo, Ser
• “自由放任，自由通行证”（“生产自由和贸易自由”）
• “laissez-faire, laissez-passer” (“freedom to produce and freedom to trade”)
• 拉斯科洞穴壁画
• Lascaux cave paintings
• 拉丁
• Latin
• 劳里昂
• Laurion
• 约翰·劳
• Law, John
• 佛罗伦萨银行家联盟
• League of Florentine Bankers
• 账簿
• ledger
• 最后贷款人
• lender of last resort
• 列宁，弗拉基米尔
• Lenin, Vladimir
• 比萨的莱昂纳多/斐波那契
• Leonardo of Pisa/Fibonacci
• 《计算之书》（Liber Abaci）
• Liber Abaci, the Book of Calculations
• 利奥波德二世国王
• Leopold II, King
• 列维，普里莫：如果这是一个人
• Levi, Primo: If This Is a Man
• 刘易斯，迈克尔：《无限之旅》
• Lewis, Michael: Going Infinite
• 负债
• liabilities
• 流动性
• liquidity
• 识字能力
• literacy
• 贷款
• loans
• 《最高总法律》
• Loi du Maximum général
• 伦敦
• London
• 路易十四，国王
• Louis XIV, King
• 路易十六，国王
• Louis XVI, King
• 一位已故贵族与著名人物威尔逊先生之间的情书，揭示了这位著名绅士崛起和惊人辉煌的真实历史。
• Love-Letters Between a certain late Nobleman and the famous Mr. Wilson discovering the true History of the Rise and surprising Grandeur of that celebrated Beau
• 马丁·路德
• Luther, Martin
• 吕底亚帝国
• Lydian Empire
• M-Pesa
• M-Pesa